Lewtak organ, Horsens, Denmark

Gerhard Grenzing

Born in Insterburg, Germany, Gerhard Grenzing trained in organbuilding with Rudolf von Beckerath in Hamburg, and gained further qualification by working with several other European workshops, mainly in Austria and Switzerland.

Beginning in 1967, he restored several organs in Majorca. In 1972, he set up his own workshop in El Papiol, near Barcelona, Spain. Approximately 250 new and restored organs have left the Grenzing workshop for Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Bogotá, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, and Russia.

Since its founding in 1975 Radio France has remained the sole public radio broadcaster in France. The sprawling premises in the 16th arrondissement, occupied by the station from its inception, have been enhanced by a new 1,461-seat concert hall. However, in the design by the Parisian architectural bureau AS Architecture-Studio with acoustic consulting by the renowned firm of Nagata Acoustics from Japan, no organ was foreseen at the outset.

Only with a spirited campaign by dozens of leading figures in organ circles and the music world at large did the authorities eventually become convinced that in an organ city the likes of Paris and in a room like this one, a one-of-a-kind concert-hall organ must not be lacking. The attention that was aroused in this way spurred Radio France to have the organ project overseen by a committee of six organists, made up of Michel Bouvard, Thierry Escaich, François Espinasse, Bernard Foccroulle, Olivier Latry, and Jean-Pierre Leguay.

Once our firm had been awarded the contract for building the organ, and subsequent to an international call for tenders, we were actively supported and stimulated by the committee during the total of six years that the design phase, execution, and finishing were to last. The intense dialogue that came about among us as organbuilders and these experienced specialists was extraordinarily enriching and has already become a significant basis for future offshoot projects.

When I began to build organs in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1970s my work was quickly noticed in France and acknowledged with important contracts there. The company leadership in the Grenzing firm has meanwhile been transferred to my daughter Natalie Grenzing, seconded by the German master-organbuilder Andreas Fuchs. My sixty years’ knowledge is always appreciated. Our particular responsibility for the realization of the Radio France concert hall organ was shared by our entire team, consisting of twenty seasoned collaborators from seven nations.

Hallmarks of an organ for a concert venue

How, then, does a concert hall organ differ from its sibling in a church? It needs to feature a formal and coloristic relationship to all the tone colors of our instrumental and vocal musical culture. From a wafting pianissimo to the most massive fortissimo it should accompany, enhance, and provide the foundation for soloists, choirs, a chamber orchestra, and the large symphony orchestra. It should be capable of fulfilling its role in the orchestral literature and serve in the various styles of organ repertory. Finally, composers and improvisers should construe such an organ as an inspiring and subtly appointed medium for new works.

In May 2010, following the awarding of the contract, a meeting was held with the committee, in which, with the participation of six collaborators from our team, the technical and especially the tonal conceptions as well as the design of the consoles and accessories were discussed and voted on. It was only in this meeting that, through creative interplay among all those participating, the definitive specification and the technical details of the organ were determined; some among them were decidedly innovative. Several registers are located on an auxiliary windchest, so that they can be used in the Grand-Orgue as well as in the Pedal.

In many aspects of designing this organ we broke new ground tonally and technically. To our knowledge, for example, there exists no other instrument that may be played simultaneously from an electric console with proportional action and from a mechanical console. Our idea of a three-rank Gamba chorus with 4′ extension was accepted. For this we envisioned a bright tone color, almost as a preliminary stage leading up to the use of high mutations or mixtures.

Our wish to have variety in the area of reeds was received favorably as well. Thus not only was a chamade instituted but also a high-pressure division with tubas, which—enhanced by high-pressure flutes—sets the instrument off against the orchestra or, with its “broad shoulders,” underpins the same. Similarly, the Cor anglais in the Solo division, for example, was developed with a particular color for solo work.

We understand that French ears have a predilection for the sound of the indigenous French reed stops. As a result of our studies we are constantly aware in what country and for what ears we are creating (or, even more important, restoring) sounds. Hence a careful distinction was made between reed stops in the German style—which, versatile in their combination possibilities and together with the flues yielding various vowel sounds, can be used polyphonically—and the reed stops usual in French organs. The names of these stops make them recognizable by the wording, such as Trompete as opposed to Trompette.

The organ casework was designed by the architect of the hall, taking our technical/stylistic specifications into account. The instrument is thus so integrated into the hall that it comes across not so much as a distinct body but above all by virtue of the huge, 12 meter by 12 meter organ façade.

Our technical designer succeeded in fitting the eighty-seven registers with their 5,230 pipes into a depth of only some 3.84 meters, yet with a sense of order and clarity. In the foremost row of the façade stand the 8′ and 4′ pipes of the Grand-Orgue and Pedal, then just behind them the corresponding 16′ pipes, which fill up the entire space of the central case image.

The austere basic outline is relieved by the array of pipe ranks in a free play of pipe sizes and foot lengths. The swell shades framing the façade symbolize in three levels the enclosed divisions of the first, third, and fourth manuals, which opens up on a glimpse of the pipes standing behind. The effect, further enhanced by lighting setups, lends a dynamic visual dimension to the organist’s playing. This lighting function may of course be turned off.

The case pipes, in typical Spanish fashion, are polished with a scraper applied perpendicular to the pipe body. Together with the multi-faceted artificial illumination an enlivening effect of subtle contrast with the pipe bodies is achieved, which in neutral light is transformed into a gossamer sheen.

The main façade is formed by pipes. Next to it are found the visible swell shades, and to the outside on either side the pedal, which is masked by acoustically transparent fabric.

The console arrangements

The mechanical-action attached console features a visual link to the conductor via a screen and a mirror. Both can be slid into the case. Special functions of the console include:

• four adjustable crescendos that may be assigned to any of the swell pedals;

• a cumulative device for all enclosed divisions (“All Swells”);

• for the manual couplers, mechanical or electric action may be selected;

• a MIDI replay and tuning system;

• freely adjustable interval couplers (prepared for; you can chose any interval—for example a third, fifth, ninth, or any other “strange” interval—for coupling to any manual and thus enrich the color of registration);

• freely adjustable divided pedal couplers (prepared for).

The mobile console on the orchestra plateau is equipped with proportional electric action (sensitive touch).

A tracker organ with refined touch-sensitive action enables the organist to control the crucial attack and release parameters of the pipe speech, the only way the potential for musical expressivity can be realized by means of the corresponding reaction of the wind. With a normal electric action this is not possible, since only an on/off contact is involved. On the other hand, proportional electric action accurately conveys the movement of the fingers to the pallets in the windchest. Even a pedal tone, which the organist has such a hard time controlling at a large instrument, can henceforth be given a surprisingly slow sound decay.

Particular features of the mobile console include:

• transparent design, with no pedestal of its own, thereby being extremely low-lying and easily movable;

• all divisions can be assigned to various keyboards, meaning an inversion between Grand-Orgue/Positif and Récit/Solo, e.g., Grand-Orgue on the first manual, the Positif on the second or vice-versa;

• the “point of contact,” that is the exact place within the keydrop at which the note sounds or cuts off, can be adjusted;

• the lateral position of the pedalboard can be variously adjusted, for example C2 under manual C3 or D2 under manual C3.

Features common to both consoles:

• both consoles have four 61-note manual keyboards that are capped with bone and ebony. The pedalboards with 32 keys are made of oak. Via the touchscreen the organist can store personal files or, for example, adjust the speed of the tremolos;

• the key sostenuto functions either as an addition (that is, all depressed keys continue to sound) or as a substitution (the previously depressed keys are cancelled when new keys are depressed). When one of the two functions is activated, it is cancelled by activation of the other function;

• both consoles can be played simultaneously. Priority for the respective registration can be assigned at will to the mechanical or to the electric console.

Further particularities:

• there is a sequencer with wireless remote control for the assistant, so that the organist is not inconvenienced;

• USB memory sticks can be used for personal data;

• via a decimal keyboard (like a telephone keyboard) and a touchscreen the combination action in its versatile modes of utilization is memorized. Thousands of combinations can be called forth. Various combinations and levels are accessible only by means of a code. Organists can rest assured that they will truly have their combinations available to them.

Tonal considerations

We exchanged views extensively with composers, conductors, and organists (especially with organist-conductors) over tonal conceptions and once again express our thanks for the patient exchange of debate on this important subject. Often the remark was made that conductors ask organists to reduce the registration more and more, as the organ is one way or another too intrusive. We believe that this intrusiveness may be attributed in the pianissimo realm to the attack, the transient speech process (Einschwingvorgang) of each pipe, and in the forte realm mainly to the “organ-typical strident” tone of the mixtures, being too set apart from the tone color of the orchestra.

For a long time now we have felt confident in having recognized the solution in the most thoroughly refined attack behavior of each pipe. Despite its initial emission, at once quick and gentle, each tone should develop freely and in an unforced way. Thereby a certain “merging” into the sound of the orchestra can be furthered. Olivier Latry expressed the same idea in the symposium (see Appendix: A symposium on the concert hall organ).

Typical organ tone is to a very significant extent produced by mixtures and their quint ranks. For this reason we set the unison ranks in the Grand-Orgue mixture apart. The quints are then available via a separate register.

As a contrasting function there is in the Grand-Orgue a Cymbal with freely adjustable intervals. The sound can thereby be registered in the most varied colors as well as in the manner of actual Cymbals, but particularly as Ninths and Septièmes, whereby the organ, even in the midst of a triple forte in the orchestra, remains audibly distinct.

The instrument is divided into seven tonal groups in all that can either correspond with each other or be set off soloistically: Grand-orgue, Récit expressif, Positif expressif, Solo expressif, Solo Haute Pression [high-pressure] expressif, Chamade, and Pedal.

As an unusual tonal effect, in the Positif a wind pressure is available that is progressively modifiable by means of a separate swell pedal. As opposed to the standard wind cutoff this has the advantage that the manipulated pipe tone of all stops in this division remains less out-of-tune and better supplied, as not the quantity but only the pressure of the wind flow is changed.

From November 7 to 9, 2013, there was an initial, in-depth examination by the commission of the almost fully set up organ in our generously proportioned erecting room. For the first time in the large room with its 17 meters height and acoustics acclaimed for their high quality, the experts were able to play the instrument, exploring its features and discussing it with us. It thus seemed appropriate to organize the first concerts on the next day, followed by a symposium entitled “Organs in Concert Halls.” The members of the commission offered the concert, allowing as well the possibility of a discussion among some eighty specialists we had invited from throughout Europe (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw1D5i_luFA; www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtagKK0VALo; and the summary of the discussion in the appendix).

Installation of the organ in Paris and its tonal characteristics

Following erection of the organ and the first on-site tests, the instrument was optimally adjusted to the room. We were eager, as a challenge from the outset, to take on the dauntingly dry acoustic of the hall. Once again, the instrument had to be adjusted to the tonal power of the orchestra, without relinquishing the tonal poetry and subtleties of the various colors and dynamic levels. We were most grateful indeed for the close collaboration and numerous instructive and supportive moments spent with the organists of the commission, in particular Olivier Latry.

From May 7 to 9, 2016, Radio France hosted dedication concerts with fifteen organists whose programs ranged from family concerts, a “Poetry and Organ” program, and one of improvised Andalusian-Arab music, to the avant-garde. The performers were Pascale Rouet, Coralie Amedjkane, David Cassan, Guillaume Nussbaum, Freddy Eichelberger, Juan de la Rubia, Lionel Avot, and Els Biesemans. The crowning final concert featured organists Michel Bouvard, Thierry Escaich, François Espinasse, Olivier Latry, Shin-Young Lee, and Jean-Pierre Leguay on May 9. You can hear the program on the internet at https://www.youtube.com/user/GerhardGrenzing.

Radio France intends to put the newly created instrument to use in highly multifarious ways. A campaign has been undertaken for the founding of a circle of patrons and donors committed to future activities focusing on this organ. The idea has been broached for workshops and study trips, public masterclasses, promotion of young titular organists, organ and cinema, a cycle of radio plays with France Culture, as well as a composition contest. Since Radio France records all its concerts, thorough maintenance of our instrument is important: it is carried out by our Parisian colleague Michel Goussu.

My heartfelt thanks for the confidence and the patient, consistently professional collaboration goes out to the six organists of the Radio France organ commission, the construction director Nadim Callabe, the conservator (or curator) of the organ Jean-Michel Mainguy, and most particularly the twenty collaborators on my staff.

I have in gratitude dedicated the success of the project to my master teacher Rudolf von Beckerath, who came as an apprentice to Paris and went away seven years later with knowledge to impart, and to our collaborator and friend Andreas Mühlhoff, who departed from us in sorrowful circumstances.

Perspectives

Following completion of the instrument one is beset with many thoughts: wherefore this effort? In the course of the last turn of the century the question was often asked: What will become of the organ in the future? Aware that the organ is the most evolution-prone of instruments, one could answer the question about its future development that the organ adapts to the needs and the spirit of the society of its time. Or, better put, it expresses it as a kind of mirror. But what is indeed our Zeitgeist of today?

Perhaps this: more and more we are determined by today’s technology. Our entire doings must occur ever faster. We want to have everything that can possibly be had. Even acknowledging that what seems modern today will already be outdated the day after tomorrow, we cannot simply exit this cycle. As was remarked at the end of the symposium, it seems to me that observance of musical ethics provides guidance in value boundaries.

In our shop we give full rein to the most novel technical developments and further enhance them. We are nevertheless very careful not to let ourselves be distracted, cultivating or incorporating noble, time-tested musical values.

Appendix: A symposium on the concert hall organ

We value any opportunity for enhancing the exchange of ideas. The Barcelona airport is located only twenty-five minutes away from our shop. Our slogan, “We are not far away, but rather neighbors,” was once again confirmed. On November 8, 2013, a symposium on concert hall organs was held in our shop. The impetus came from the new organ for Radio France, which at that time was nearly completed and set up in the shop. Thanks to the spontaneous initiative of our collaborators, the space occupied by our restoration division was converted into a standing buffet restaurant. The symposium was followed by two further days with public children’s concerts, a jam session, and a concluding silent film with Juan de la Rubia as improvising organist.

Summary of the symposium on November 8, 2013, in El Papiol

Bernard Foccroulle opened the symposium and noted the lack of organs in concert halls in France. The new instrument should serve the needs of Radio France and the two orchestras that perform there.

Olivier Latry expressed his regret that, for the most part, organs in concert halls do not live up to the expectations of musicians, orchestras, and conductors. The reason: the organs are often designed in the style of a special era or in the particular style of a given organbuilder. An example thereof is the wonderful organ in Taiwan with its sixty stops. Playing it requires two assistants, and very little literature is playable on the tracker instrument.

An instrument of lesser beauty will seldom be played. A few organs have been restored and brought up to date (for example, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig), and are played thirty-five to forty times each year.

In the Radio France complex an all-encompassing project needed to take in not only the organ but also the hall, the construction in general, and the acoustics. An organ cannot sound good in just any acoustic. Hence the need for the collaboration of an acoustician.

What are the particularities of a concert hall organ? Conductors often blame the organ either for being too loud (thereby overpowering the orchestra) or too soft (thus being covered up by the orchestra). The organ must possess a wide dynamic range. The multiplicity of sounds and transient attack parameters of the orchestral instruments bring about synchronization problems with the organ. Hence the necessity of a sound with cautious attack that can thereby come about with a kind of inertia. The sound of the organ must be capable of entering more or less slowly. The Radio France instrument meets this criterion; to this are added dynamic enclosed divisions, mechanical action, as well as the proportional electric action.

Olivier Latry emphasized that the collaboration of all the organists involved in the project was highly useful. Michel Bouvard noted that the comprehension of the various authorities at Radio France made it possible to enlarge the specification, such that the organ can serve not only as an organ for orchestra (and accompaniment for choir and children’s choir), but also as a solo instrument.

Gerhard Grenzing explained that the new organ is not an orchestral organ but should be an organ for the orchestra. This implies a refined voicing style and individually cultivated attack of each pipe. He emphasized the dynamics of the swell boxes, of the very soft stops for the accompaniment of the room-filling soloists, and of the very loud stops that—without succumbing to vulgarity—are meant to give the instrument “broad shoulders.” This makes it possible to respond to the orchestra without lording over it.

This is the result of many considerations shared among conductors and organists, for which Grenzing expressed his gratitude once again, as well as of the work of his team that contributed its sensitivity, perseverance, and soul to the cause, without which success would not have been possible.

Michel Bouvard shared his experience as director of the Toulouse les Orgues festival. In Toulouse a considerable richness in organs is available, but even if the ten best organists in the world had been invited that would not have been enough; in ten years the audience would have become weary of the same basic fare, and so numerous innovative programs and activities enriched the festival offerings. The high level of the concerts was maintained. Bouvard holds great hope for the same success at Radio France.

The organ must be brought “out of the chapel” in order to create momentum for a new public; a new place in music history must be found to lend it a new role of its own, and not only as a church instrument. It is important to gain a young audience through educational endeavors, for which models exist in the world, for example the Philharmonie in Budapest. Another possibility would be to organize “cinema concerts.”

Olivier Latry underscored Bouvard’s suggestion and reported on his experience in Manchester. There he was asked, as a prelude to Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, to improvise for twenty minutes on Veni Creator. To many who had never heard an organ, this came as a revelation.

François Espinasse suggested developing initiatives with schools and universities. In this way public relations work and scientific research would be brought together in fruitful collaboration.

It is also among the organist’s tasks to turn to composers, since the latter often seem to be wary of the instrument. It is to be hoped that the organ of Radio France will enable a dialogue with them.

Jean-Pierre Leguay recalled his experience with the composers of the 1960s and 1970s, which was a very good time for the development of contemporary music. It was discovered that the organ is an unbelievable generator of tone colors. However, for many organists, above all those who were not composers, the organ was “slumbering, back there in the organ loft, hidden away and dusty.”

Study of orchestration at the conservatory changed the composers’ way of hearing and revealed the organ’s countless possibilities for tone colors. Working together with composers is of crucial importance. It is important to show them that the organ is just as rich and expressively potent an instrument as others. A concert hall organ is ultimately an element of this musical laboratory, an opportunity for composers to expand their resources through experimentation. The public should not consider the organ as a purely liturgical instrument.

Michel Bouvard recalled an anecdote concerning Pierre Boulez. To the question of why he had not composed anything for the organ he answered: “The organ has no relation to my musical ideas, since it functions for large masses of sound such as crescendo-decrescendo, whereas I seek the gentle substance of a flute or an oboe.” (A symptomatic answer from the lips of such an eminent composer.)

Christian Dépange noted that this new organ that we are now getting to know must be a kind of combative element of conviction and pedagogy for the public.

Yves Rechsteiner, successor to Michel Bouvard with Toulouse les Orgues, asked, can the pipe organ open up musical aesthetics other than classical music? How does the role of the pipe organ stand up to that of the electronic organ, which offers a much broader variety of sounds?

Bernard Foccroulle noted two applications of technology: on one hand that of the image in the service of information and publicity that could be used to make the organ more accessible, more comprehensible, and on the other hand that of making modification of the sound possible, thereby producing new sounds. Foccroulle encouraged Olivier Latry to report on his experience in digital production and the relationship between synthesizer and organ. Latry told of his experiences in Hollywood with a system in which the synthesizer was a part of the organ, opening up many perspectives. Seen in this light, the question is perhaps the possibility of an eventual addition of such a system to this organ. “I’m thinking for example of the possibility to capture the tone of the organ with swell shades closed, then projecting it via loudspeakers into the room.” Gerhard Grenzing noted in conclusion, “In this race with technology that makes nearly everything possible, I would like to recall that the nature of the organ emerging out of inner necessity is the conveying of musical emotions based on acknowledgement of ethics.”

Documentation of the symposium may be reviewed on the internet at: http://grenzing.com/RadioFrance/.

This article is a free translation by Kurt Lueders of Gerhard Grenzing’s updated text in German, used with kind permission of the original publisher, the review Ars Organi.

Builder’s website: www.grenzing.com

Radio France website: www.radiofrance.fr

Listen to the organ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0gTDZmRR8

 

2016 Gerhard Grenzing organ

GRAND-ORGUE

16′ Montre (61 pipes)

16′ Bourdon (61 pipes)

8′ Montre (61 pipes)

8′ Suavial (61 pipes)

8′ Flûte harmonique (12 basses from Bourdon, 49 pipes)

8′ Bourdon à cheminée (61 pipes)

51⁄3′ Grosse Quinte (61 pipes)

4′ Prestant (61 pipes)

4′ Flûte conique (61 pipes)

31⁄5′ Grosse Tierce (61 pipes)

22⁄3′ Quinte (61 pipes)

2′ Doublette (61 pipes)

II Sesquialtera (122 pipes)

II–V Grand Cornet (305 pipes)

III–IV [Mixtur] Octaves (207 pipes)

II–III [Mixtur] Quintes (183 pipes)

III–IV Cymbal (220 pipes)

16′ Trompete (61 pipes)

8′ Trompete (61 pipes)

Positif Expressif

16′ Quintaton (61 pipes)

8′ Principal (61 pipes)

8′ Salicional (61 pipes)

8′ Meditation (TC, celeste, 49 pipes)

8′ Bourdon (61 pipes)

4′ Prestant (61 pipes)

4′ Flûte douce (61 pipes)

22⁄3′ Nasard (61 pipes)

2′ Doublette (61 pipes)

13⁄5′ Tierce (61 pipes)

11⁄3′ Larigot (61 pipes)

11⁄7′ Septime (61 pipes)

1′ Sifflet (61 pipes)

IV Mixture (244 pipes)

16′ Basson (61 pipes)

8′ Trompette (61 pipes)

8′ Clarinette (61 pipes)

Tremblant

Récit Expressif

16′ Principal (6 basses fr Bdn, 54 pipes)

16′ Bourdon (61 pipes)

16′ Gambe (6 basses fr Bdn, 54 pipes)

8′ Principal (32 basses fr 16′ Principal, 29 pipes)

8′ Gambe (32 basses fr 16′ Gambe, 29 pipes)

8′ Voix céleste (TC, 49 pipes)

8′ Flûte harmonique (61 pipes)

8′ Cor de nuit (32 pipes fr 16′ Bourdon, 29 pipes)

4′ Octave (61 pipes)

4′ Flûte octaviante (61 pipes)

22⁄3′ Nazard (61 pipes)

2′ Octavin (61 pipes)

13⁄5′ Tierce (61 pipes)

IV Plein jeu (244 pipes)

16′ Bombarde (61 pipes)

8′ Trompette harmonique (61 pipes)

8′ Hautbois (61 pipes)

8′ Voix humaine (61 pipes)

4′ Clairon (61 pipes)

Tremblant

Solo Expressif

8′ Choeur de cordes (I–III, 147 pipes)

8′ Voix céleste (TC, 49 pipes)

8′ Flûte traversière (61 pipes)

4′ Choeur de cordes (ext 8′, 36 pipes)

4′ Flûte traversière (ext 8′, 12 pipes)

2′ Flûte (ext 8′, 12 pipes)

8′ Cor anglais (61 pipes)

Solo Haute Pression

8′ Flûte (61 pipes)

4′ Flûte (ext 8′, 12 pipes)

16′ Tuba (61 pipes)

8′ Tuba (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

4′ Tuba (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

Chamade

16′ Chamade (fr 8′)

8′ Chamade B (25 pipes)

8′ Chamade D (36 pipes)

Pédale

32′ Bourdon (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

16′ Principal (32 pipes)

16′ Soubasse (32 pipes)

16′ Contrebasse (32 pipes)

16′ Montre (G.-O.)

16′ Bourdon (Réc.)

102⁄3′ Quinte (32 pipes)

8′ Principal (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

8′ Bourdon (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

8′ Violoncelle (32 pipes)

8 Flûte (Solo)

62⁄5′ Tierce impériale (ext 31⁄5′, 12 pipes)

51⁄3′ Quinte (ext 102⁄3′, 12 pipes)

4′ Octave (32 pipes)

31⁄5′ Grosse Tierce (32 pipes)

32′ Posaune (32 pipes)

16′ Posaune (ext 32′, 12 pipes)

16′ Basson (32 pipes)

8′ Trompete (32 pipes)

8′ Basson (ext 16′, 12 pipes)

4′ Clairon (ext 8′, 12 pipes)

8′ Chamade (fr Chamade)

4′ Chamade (fr Chamade)

Couplers

G.-O–Ped.

Pos.–Ped.

Réc.–Ped.

Solo–Ped.

G.-O 4′–Ped.

Pos. 4′–Ped.

Réc. 4′–Ped.

Solo 4′–Ped.

 

G.-O. 16′–G.-O.

Pos. 16′–G.-O.

Pos.–G.-O.

Recit 16′–G.-O.

Récit–G.-O.

Solo 16′–G.-O.

Solo–G.-O.

Ped.–G.-O.

 

Pos. 16′–Pos.

Récit 16′–Pos.

Récit–Pos.

Solo–Pos.

 

Récit 16′–Récit

Solo–Récit

 

Tuba–G.-O.

Tuba–Pos.

Tuba–Récit

Tuba–Solo

Tuba–Pédale

 

Chamade–G.-O.

Chamade–Pos.

Chamade–Récit

Chamade–Solo

 

93 stops, 93 ranks, 5,308 pipes

Manual compass: 61 notes (C–C)

Pedal compass: 32 notes (C–G)

a1=442 Hz at 22 degress Celsius

Photo credit: Christophe Abramowitz.

Lewtak Pipe Organ Builders, Inc., Mocksville, North Carolina; Seven Oaks Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina

Music director’s perspective

The story began with our church’s celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. Like so many congregations, those years were filled with wonderful accomplishments as well as challenges and changes. As the people of Seven Oaks stepped forward in faith to envision what our next fifty years would look like, there was prayerful thought and deliberation given to the nature and forms of our worship. Worship is a defining feature of our congregation and serves as a touchstone around which we organize and prepare ourselves for lives of discipleship. The music ministry is a highly valued component of our worship and has a long tradition of excellence. As part of our visioning, a commitment was made to continue using the organ as the central instrument for accompanying, supporting, and enhancing our worship.

When the sanctuary was built, an eleven-rank W. Zimmer & Sons organ was installed. After more than thirty years of service, electronic and mechanical systems were failing. That, combined with the excessive unification of the pipework and lack of color and distinctiveness in the voicing, made it extremely difficult for the instrument to continue fully supporting our congregation’s worship.

Around the same time, Tom Lewtak, founder of Lewtak Pipe Organ Builders, was in the midst of installing a large new tracker instrument in a nearby church. He generously agreed to meet with us, look over our instrument, and make suggestions for how we might proceed. From our first meeting, it was clear that his philosophy was grounded in historical organ building practices and informed by a thorough understanding of twenty-first-century advances. More importantly, his advice revealed his attention to detail, passion for excellence, and heart for serving the needs of congregations. Then, after experiencing the exquisite craftsmanship and stellar tonal work done exhibited by some of his instruments, we were confident his firm was the ideal choice for our renovation project.

Within the constraints of our financial resources, Tom began crafting an instrument that would visually enhance our worship space and significantly expand the organ’s tonal resources. As he and the skilled craftsmen at Lewtak Pipe Organ Builders got to work, members of our congregation stepped up to renovate the pipe chamber space. Our own skilled volunteers labored for several months expanding the space, which allowed for doubling the number of ranks and significantly improved tonal egress.

As the project proceeded, there were a variety of challenges and changes that came along. The vast majority of the organ’s systems were found to be simply inadequate and needed to be replaced. As an example, the original console and keyboards could not be rebuilt, necessitating the construction of a brand new console. Still, every step of the way Tom found workable solutions that enhanced the sound, the visual beauty, and functional integrity of the instrument. In the end, what began as a renovation idea ended up as truly much more than a rebuilt instrument. We had a new organ.

Our new twenty-four-rank instrument has over 1,300 pipes. The original pipework, after proper revoicing, was used primarily to create the Great division. New pipework and chests make up an enclosed Swell division and significantly expanded the Pedal division. All pipework was voiced with extraordinary care and skill to maximize the quality and clarity of each rank and to create a satisfying ensemble sound that takes full advantage of the building’s acoustics. The new two-manual, stoptab console includes beautifully inlaid wood. It has two excellently crafted tracker-touch keyboards, all digital combination and control systems, and an adjustable speed tremulant that adapts well to music from many different periods. The organ is tuned to Neidhardt 1724 “Grosse Stadt,” a temperament that is more consistent with classical temperaments, enhancing the overall quality of the sound and adding a touch of historical authenticity to the music. The project was capped off with the installation of Tom Lewtak’s handsomely designed and crafted organ façade, which notably enriched the aesthetic quality of our worship space.

All in all, this project has reformed our church’s music and worship by creating for us an instrument having independent divisions, each splendidly colorful and powerful in ensemble. Once completed we had just a few months before the pandemic hit and worship was moved online. Now, a year later our congregation has regathered and is once again enjoying the transformation of our organ and the rich musical experience with which it enhances our worship.

We have been deeply blessed by our partnership with Tom Lewtak and Lewtak Pipe Organ Builders. Their commitment to excellence, fastidiousness, and generous spirit has made them valued partners. We now look forward to decades of music ministering and inspiring all who hear our organ to join us in giving praise to God!

—Lloyd R. Pilkington, Ph.D.

Director of Music Ministry

Technical remarks

Because right from the beginning it was obvious that this would not be a mechanical-action organ, we approached the Seven Oaks project with a dose of nervousness. Throughout our twenty years in business, we have performed many renovations of non-tracker instruments, but we had never built one thus far! In the process, we have certainly learned many things that are specific to electric-action organs—and by that we mean both the good and the bad. In general, it confirmed our long-standing conviction that, if at all possible, the choice of mechanical action is overall a better one. However, not to sound negative, we are rushing to admit that there are circumstances that make it impossible to build mechanical, and then the choice of an electric action is necessary and it can be executed in a quite satisfactory manner.

At Seven Oaks Presbyterian Church, for the new Swell division main windchest, we selected a particular chest construction, one that we felt would deliver the most satisfying musical results and be reliable for a very long time. The windchest is of a slider-and-pallet type, with pallets being fitted with balanced valves and pulled down by electromagnets. This was to avoid the effect of sudden wind rush and abrupt pipe speech caused by the magnet moving too quickly. It is not a new idea, of course, but every builder puts his/her own twist on it, and so did we, naturally. Working through the trial and error process, we arrived at a “sweet spot” ratio of the pneumatic-to-pallet area, which ended up giving us the desired effect of natural pipe speech behavior. We tried, and I think that we succeeded, to avoid having an organ that behaves too much like a machine and not enough like an instrument. The responsiveness and natural performance of the Swell chest turned out to be most pleasing both for the player and the listener.

For several other ranks, in particular in the Pedal division, we had to build many more windchests with other kinds of action. In total, because of the space limitations, there are thirteen new windchests in this organ, some as small as twelve notes and as big as 64, with a variety of action types. This entire array of components is controlled by an electronic system, integrated with the console interface.

As for the division placement, once again we had to face the limitations of available real estate. The organ chamber offered generous height, but little square footage area. With the new, greatly enlarged front opening for the façade, we decided to keep things as centered and as symmetrical as possible. The Great division was therefore placed centrally behind the front pipes, with the largest Pedal pipes occupying the space directly behind it against the back wall. The Swell, however, would not fit above it, and our solution was to split it into C and C-sharp sides and place it on two opposing ends of the organ chamber. Therefore, in reality, there are two expression boxes, with two sets of louvers operated synchronously, and with the wind supply interconnected to assure that the windchests behave like one, not two separate entities. An interesting challenge came with the tremolo, which stubbornly affected one side more than the other! It took several attempts and serious tricks to get it under control.

In all of our organs, the wind supply is purposely left a bit unstable. Not to push the needle of good taste to either extreme, we simply do not like the wind to be a “flatline,” or to be as unsteady as to become an annoyance. A middle-ground solution seems to be pleasing to most people. The organ at Seven Oaks has only one but fairly large set of bellows with double rise, inverted ribs. It guarantees generous storage capacity and steady wind pressure even at times of the highest demand. The windchests do not have schwimmer plates or “floating” regulators. Instead, there are small concussion bellows attached to individual chests, allowing for much finer regulation of wind behavior. The result is the sound that breathes with the music, naturally and discreetly.

The console layout follows a minimalistic, yet very functional design. It offers utilitarian simplicity and friendliness even at the very first contact. There is everything one might need for both service playing as well as for the most arduous literature performance. The design of the console shell is an extension of the façade motif and was made from the same species of wood. Our intention was to create a strong visual link between the two.

Lastly, I want to offer not a technical remark but something that is truly important in the overall project of this scope—the human aspect of it. At Seven Oaks Presbyterian Church, we have encountered so much kindness, understanding, respect, trust, and goodwill that we would be remiss not to give it a special mention. This was perhaps not the most high-value contract an organ building establishment would ask for, but in terms of personal satisfaction, it was a remarkable experience for our entire team. We are sincerely grateful for the friendship and support of good folks in this graceful worship community.

—Tom Lewtak, MM, MA

President

Lewtak Pipe Organ Builders, Inc.

The dedicatory recital will take place in October. The program, “Pipes of Praise,” will include music from across the centuries from Bach to Bock. Dr. Lloyd Pilkington, Director of Music Ministries, will present the recital.

GREAT (Manual I)

8′ Principal (existing)

8′ Gedackt (1–24 existing, 25–61 new)

4′ Octave (new)

4′ Gemshorn (existing)

2-2⁄3′ Nasard (1–12 new, 13–61 existing, from old Sesquialter II)

2′ Superoctave (new)

Mixture III (existing)

8′ Trompete (1–12 new, 13–61 existing)

Great to Great 4

Swell to Great 16

Swell to Great 8

Swell to Great 4

SWELL (Manual II, enclosed)

8′ Hohlflöte (new, wood)

8′ Gamba (new)

8′ Celeste TC (existing)

4′ Prestant (new)

4′ Koppelflöte (1–12 new, 13–61 existing)

2′ Flageolet (new)

1-3⁄5′ Tierce (1–12 new, 13–61 existing, from old Sesquilater II)

1-1⁄3′ Larigot (new)

8′ Oboe (new)

Tremolo

Swell to Swell 16

Swell to Swell 4

PEDAL

16′ Violon (new)

16′ Subbass (1–12 existing, 13–32 new)

8′ Octave (new)

8′ Bourdon (from Great Gedackt 8′)

4′ Choralbass (new)

16′ Fagott (1–24 existing, 25–32 new)

8′ Trumpet (1–20 shared with 16′ Fagott, 21–32 new )

Great to Pedal 8

Great to Pedal 4

Swell to Pedal 8

Swell to Pedal 4

 

24 stops

24 ranks

1,331 pipes (622 existing, 709 new)

Manual compass c1–c61

Pedal compass c1–g32

Electric key and stop action

Tracker-touch keyboards

Electronics by Peterson Electro-Musical Products

Tuning temperament: Neidhardt 1724 “Grosse Stadt”

David Baskeyfield

David Baskeyfield studied at Oxford University and the Eastman School of Music (studio of David Higgs). The recipient of several first prizes at national and international organ competitions (all with audience prize), and one of few organists based in North America to improvise regularly in recital, he enjoys an international performance career. His latest CD, on the Acis label, Dupré: The American Experience, was recorded on the French-influenced 1932 Aeolian-Skinner organ at Saint Mary the Virgin, Times Square, New York City, and includes the United States premier recording of an unpublished orchestral transcription by Dupré of Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He is represented in North America by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. Connect on Facebook (David Baskeyfield, organist), www.youtube/c/dbaskeyfield, or www.davidbaskeyfield.com.

The Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, houses the collected papers of Rolande Falcinelli, professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire from 1955 to 1986. A finding aid is available through Sibley’s website (www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/files/Rolande-Falcinelli-Archive.pdf). Alongside manuscripts, correspondence, and writings by Falcinelli, the collection includes a number of writings by Marcel Dupré, whose association with Falcinelli as mentor and subsequently colleague is well known.

The article below, in Dupré’s predictably meticulous handwriting, is apparently unpublished. It is undated, though from its content can be placed in the late 1950s: Ernest M. Skinner was still alive (he died in 1960), and Dupré appears to make reference to the American innovation of the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, launched in 1953. Further, the American Classic approach to organ reform was sufficiently advanced for Dupré to comment unfavorably on its extremes. Dupré’s first American tour was in 1921, and his observations thus span almost forty years.

The content would admittedly be of less interest if it were not written by a figure such as Dupré. There is very little groundbreaking information here, it is not all entirely accurate—some of his assessments are suspect to the point of spurious—and interest lies principally in these idiosyncratic impressions coming from Dupré himself. Some assertions hint at an agenda: admiration for aspects of American instruments, in particular their action, while unable to refrain from some nationalistic bias in his narrative, and taking a swipe at (likely) Ernest White and possibly even his old friend G. Donald Harrison; and perhaps a grudging desire for France’s pedagogical system and professional organ scene to learn from that of the Americans. At the same time he is sufficiently gushing to be sure to keep his American impresarios happy, presumably the likelihood of further lucrative touring not an insignificant consideration. Overall, he plays two contrasting roles, both of seasoned touring virtuoso and wide-eyed newcomer to a land of plenty. I have annotated many of his claims where it seemed helpful; as to various other assertions, the reader will have no trouble drawing her or his own conclusions. Dupré’s prose is rather dry, and I have attempted to convey this in my translation.

I am grateful to Jonathan Ambrosino for advice and clarification during the preparation of my annotations, and to David Peter Coppen, head of Sibley Special Collections, for his kind assistance with access to the archive.

Editor’s note: subheads have been added to Dupré’s text.

Marcel Dupré: L’Orgue aux Etats-Unis¹

North America presents the organist with a treasure trove of experiences and opportunity. There is much to be learned there about different kinds of organ installation, the instrument’s evolution, and trends in its construction; and through these, the very place of the organ within this society.

The visitor is immediately struck by the number of churches scattered about the land. In New York City alone, I count some 1,030 parishes. On arriving in any town, large or small, the visitor is greeted by a main street replete with a prodigious number of towers and steeples. This is down to private endowment, in the form of memorials: when a member of a wealthy family dies, his parents will wish to perpetuate his memory through a public gift—a hospital, library, school, university building or church. In each of these, you will find the finest materials, care, and good taste in the furnishings and, regularly, a beautiful organ.

These churches have capacities varying between five hundred and a thousand seats and, most often, their acoustic is excellent. [sic!]

A number of cities have cathedrals of large dimensions. Their style is usually English Gothic. In Catholic cathedrals the organ is in a rear gallery, as in France. In the Protestant churches, it is situated close to the choir, as in England. These instruments can have as many as a hundred or a hundred and fifty stops.

But it is not only in the churches that fine instruments may be found. There is not one city without numerous concert halls, of various sizes according to location, and always with an organ.

Orchestral concerts are given in halls rarely exceeding eighteen hundred seats. I suppose that this number is the limit if the audience is to hear a concerto soloist properly, or to hear the orchestra with any kind of clarity. Of course, these halls are not just for orchestras—they are generally excellent for chamber music and solo recitals.

The municipal auditorium in each large town is much bigger: four to five thousand seats. These are geared toward oratorios and special concerts by touring virtuosos. As they generally house an enormous organ, they invite famous organists to perform there.

Finally, the “Convention Hall” reaches gigantic proportions, twelve- to eighteen-thousand seats. They are really only used for political rallies or large social events. The acoustic is, as you might expect, terrible, and completely unsuitable for music. Nevertheless, they all have giant organs, which are often excellent.²

The organ in the American education system

But what is perhaps most striking is what we find in universities and colleges: concert halls everywhere, in proportion to the size of the student body. Size is also what determines nomenclature: a college has fewer than three thousand students; a university has more than three thousand and may reach ten thousand. There is nothing more extraordinary than to see these huge rooms filled entirely by young men and young women. They make the most enthusiastic and spirited audiences and also the most attentive. Seven or eight minutes before the concert, these immense halls begin to fill. After the last encore, they empty even faster.

Over the course of their four years of higher education, from age eighteen to twenty-two, these students have the opportunity to hear—and not just once—all the pianists, violinists, singers, chamber musicians, organists, conductors, orchestras, choirs touring the United States. These concerts are paid for out of their tuition fees. They are a part of the education that they receive. It can be seen that this is building a truly elite audience for the future.

High schools (fourteen to eighteen years) also have concert halls and organs. This young audience, likewise attentive and effusive, is quite capable of listening to a serious concert. These are generally given at one o’clock in the afternoon. The concerts are never more than an hour in length.

Finally, numerous private homes have luxurious music rooms whose organs sometimes reach a hundred stops. Their rich owners engage touring artists and invite their friends to come listen to them.³

In a nutshell, there is no place in America that is not equipped to offer a performer a location and instrument with an audience of all ages, always interested and gracious.

And something we can only dream of is the accomplishments and the influence of the “Guild of Organists,” a national union of American organists of more than 6,000 members.⁴ To become a member requires sitting a two-part examination.⁵ Each year a convention takes place in one town or another, bringing together the thousands of members. This gives young organists a platform and allows them to make contacts. And within the regional chapters, the members, rather than bitterly defending their own professional interests, discuss questions of organ construction, and recently published organ and choral music, devoting their efforts to developing local interest in the organ. They are very successful in this endeavor.

Young organists get a great deal of help. I could mention one college that has thirty-five [sic]⁶ little practice organs.

This state of affairs did not happen overnight. It is due to two factors:

1. The existence of a “Music Doctorate,” something unknown in France. In the USA, quite apart from the “Doctor Honoris Causa,” a composer can receive a doctorate for an opera, an oratorio or even a symphony.⁷ As I see it, we [French] are a long way from this kind of accreditation for music and the arts.

2. More than eighty years of enterprise and progress in organbuilding. France actually plays a part in this story, as I will explain:

American and French organbuilding differences

The electro-magnet, which made possible electric key action, was invented in 1860⁸ by Albert Peschard, organist of the Abbaye aux Hommes in Caen, and a physicist. He built a small house organ to test this (Bouches du Rhône), which was unfortunately destroyed. Two French builders, Debierre and Merklin, built electric action organs. Meanwhile, the invention made it over the Atlantic and, over some forty years, American builders struggled with failed attempts and every possible mishap. Little by little electric action was made reliable. Not ceasing to experiment, these builders improved key and stop action, developed their specifications for flexibility, and made their instruments more and more comfortable.

It was the builders Huntching [sic], Steere, Ernest Skinner (who is still alive today), Kimball, and Austin who worked hardest at this early stage.⁹

In Canada, the two brothers Clavers [sic]¹⁰ and Samuel Casavant, French Canadians from Montreal and personal friends of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, worked ceaselessly over almost half a century, with magnificent results.

We are forced to admit that the electric organ, though having been invented in Caen in 1860, but developed and established across the Atlantic, and copied slavishly elsewhere, only eventually returned to France, its birthplace, in 1924.¹¹

American builders did not limit themselves to addressing mechanical problems. They strove to create stops of new timbres. No firm was short of the necessary workshops, laboratories, and teams of specialist engineers.¹²

Naturally, time would tell which of these ideas would be viable and useful, and which would be rejected. Though it cannot quite be said that organbuilding over there is completely standardized, however logical that conclusion would be, a great deal of standardization is nevertheless applied. In spite of this, it is clear that competition between progressive builders sometimes led to extremes, and certain tendencies grew into real infatuations, which can be summarized below.

I would not mention here the so-called “theatre organ,” which can be considered to have disappeared completely with the development of cinema with recorded sound, in 1929, except that we too often forget that this type of instrument actually came about more than 15 years prior to the invention of moving pictures. In effect it was conceived by the English organbuilder Hope-Jones for the University of Edinburgh, around 1885.¹³ It was Wurlitzer, of Cincinnati,¹⁴ that picked up the idea and used it unaltered in the first movie theatres.

The first influence was that of high-pressure stops, from England. There, they built Tubas and Diapasons on up to a meter of wind,¹⁵ whereas many of Cavaillé-Coll’s cathedral organs do not go beyond 10 centimeters of pressure. English organists use these stops for a specific purpose: they are made only to solo out the melody of a hymn sung by the whole assembly. They can support and guide thousands of voices, but an experienced organist would never play chords on the stop; the reverberation would be explosive, blinding.¹⁶

One curious endeavor was that by Haskell, of the Estey firm,¹⁷ who managed to imitate the sound of reed stops with flue pipes. He wished to avoid frequent reed tuning. Up close, the illusion is perfect, though disappears in large rooms at a greater distance from the instrument.

Then came the fads. This was, first of all, string stops, mostly in instruments in private homes. They were, naturally, accompanied by celesting ranks (imitating vibrato). They displaced almost all the other families of tone color. Builders even tried to make mixtures out of very narrow pipes. The sound of those things was particularly acidic. There was also the profusion of various reed stops (oboes, clarinets, etc.), which took the place of foundation stops, making all but special effects impossible.

Finally, after the proper reintroduction of classical mixture stops, which happened around 1923,¹⁸ the trend shifted little by little to the almost complete exclusion of foundation stops. I can cite almost unbelievable examples of instruments of more than 90 stops with only six 8′ foundation stops.¹⁹ You can judge the aggressiveness of these organs yourself. I find them like drinking bowlfuls of vinegar, and you may quote me on that.

Blended styles and large instruments

But this country is so big, the opportunities so great, and the different schools of thought so numerous that everything ends up circulating in an unlimited expansion of ideas. There is room for these different instruments to coexist and last peacefully, for the most part.

Most organbuilders are still guided by common sense. And they build countless instruments of rich and beautiful palettes of sound, perfectly adapted to their location. A list of names, even abridged, is impossible here. I shall simply mention:

1. The cities richest in fine organs: New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Columbus.

2. The best endowed universities: Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles.

I would also mention, in Canada: Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver.

The giant organs in America intrigue French organists. The questions are often the same: “Are all these stops really necessary?” “Can they all really be different?” My answer is that the massed effect and depth of sound produced by these instruments is astonishing. Then, on playing them, you realize that every stop does have its own characteristic effect. Each family of stops on each keyboard presents a gradation of intensity and volume, which allows an almost infinite subtlety in combining stops. Think of a great box of pastels, where each color contributes its own shade and hue to the whole spectrum.

Among these immense instruments, the strangest, and also the biggest in the world, is the Wanamaker of Philadelphia. It has 451 stops, around 32,000 pipes.²⁰ There is no borrowing or duplexing, even on the pedals. It has six manuals, but actually consists of eleven enclosed divisions that can be assigned by stopkeys to whichever manual you wish. It has 48 general pistons, adjustable at will; having registered a whole recital in advance, the touch of a thumb on one of the buttons under the manuals will bring on or take off stops instantly to give the prepared combination.

It seems that the era of the building of these giants is over. They remain, nevertheless, as witnesses to a period where material possibilities seemed limitless. Today we can confess that, though interesting, they are, happily, not necessary to art.

America is a land of surprises, and you will walk from discovery to discovery, all of them reflecting the diversity of thought and opinion. The European stands astonished before this rampant and incessant activity, this prodigious amount of production, which at first glance just seems effortless. Whoever goes there and has the fortune to be initiated into the organ world in its various forms, can only long for such potential, such will, and such drive in his own country.

Translation © David Baskeyfield, 2019

Notes

1. Roland Falcinelli Archive, Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, Box 33/1.

2. Data on original seating capacity are hard to come by and modern building and fire codes render current occupancy irrelevant to making a judgment on Dupré’s figures. For example, Boardwalk Hall now lists a maximum seating capacity of 14,770, a substantially smaller number than its original 41,000.

3. Currently living in Rochester, I am duty bound to note George Eastman’s Aeolian
organ of 132 ranks at its completion; the Eastman House’s collection of rolls includes a number recorded by Dupré at the Aeolian Hall studios, New York City, and from correspondence archived at the Eastman House we can see that Dupré played for George Eastman at least twice, in December 1923 and 1924.

4. The Story of the American Guild of Organists, by Guild founder Samuel A. Baldwin, published in 1946—the AGO’s 50th anniversary year—describes membership as “well above 6,000.” That figure in itself, though, does not really help much in pinning down a precise date of Dupré’s article.

5. This is not accurate; examination has only ever been required for certification [Baldwin, 1946].

6. In mentioning such an obviously inflated number, Dupré may have hoped to put pressure on the Paris Conservatoire or the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. His interest in the distinctly American concept of the practice organ (unknown to European schools at that time) is neatly illustrated by a pencil sketch of the plan of the Eastman School organ practice rooms with a note of each room’s instrument, also in the Falcinelli Archive.

7. This seems likely to be a reference specifically to the DMA, the academic study of music at degree-conferring institutions being long established in Europe. Such figures as Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms had been named honorary Doctors of Music, the title “Dr. Brahms” being frequently used pejoratively by his contemporaries to belittle him as a stolid, academic composer. The DMA was developed principally by Howard Hanson (dean of the Eastman School of Music and himself the recipient of an honorary doctorate in 1925). The accreditation body, the National Association of Schools of Music, approved the degree in 1952, it was offered in 1953, and the first degree was conferred in 1954.

8. At the Paris Exposition of 1855, Stein and Son, manufacturers of reed organs, exhibited an organ operated by electromagnets applied directly to the pallets. Sufficient current could not be generated to operate the larger pallets reliably. In 1861 Peschard worked with Charles Barker on applying electromagnets to Barker’s pneumatic motors; Peschard’s electro-pneumatic system was patented in 1864. It was famously used in the organ for St. Augustin, completed 1866, but proved unreliable, principally owing to the strong current required for magnets operating on the motors directly. This tended to magnetize the electromagnets permanently, causing ciphers. The large wet-pile batteries required to generate such strong current were costly and required frequent replacement, and there was a danger of splashing mercury from the contacts during staccato playing. In 1898 Cavaillé-Coll rebuilt the instrument with Barker machines [Fenner Douglass, Cavaillé-Coll and the French Romantic Tradition, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999].

9. Dupré’s characterization is misleading. It was Skinner, working at the time for Hutchings, who produced the first electric action (1893) bearing that company’s name, prior to founding his own company [Ambrosino, A History of the Skinner Company]. Dupré also omits the contribution of Robert Hope-Jones, who was associated in America with Austin (1903–1904) and Skinner (1905–1906). Skinner had first met Hope-Jones in England in 1898. Later in life professing dislike of Hope-Jones’s instruments, he nevertheless must have been impressed by their action: “I believe you were the first to recognize the importance of a low voltage of electric action, and that the world owes you its thanks for the round wire contact and inverted magnet.”

10. The builder’s Christian name is Claver.

11. Dupré is being coy. No instrument of milestone status was completed or dedicated in 1924; 1924 was the date of the infamous installation of the electric blower at Notre Dame, but “electric organ” clearly refers to key action. The year is almost certainly a reference to two events.

In 1924, Auguste Convers assumed directorship of what had been the Cavaillé-Coll company, though the firm had yet to produce a new organ. The same year, E. M. Skinner visited Paris for the second time (the first was in 1898 when Dupré would have been twelve years old) and Dupré might just be taking the rare liberty of a rhetorical twist to conflate electric playing action with the person of Skinner. Dupré spoke extremely highly of Skinner’s instruments; his admiration of their action and playing aids is well documented. Arthur Poister, the legendary pedagogue and one of Dupré’s first American students, recalled that “had it not been for [Dupré’s] experience with American organs with their easier manual and pedal actions, he could not have written some of the music he wrote. His entire concept of tempos and playability was changed by his first American experience.” In Dupré’s own words, “mechanical improvements on American organs are far in advance of European . . . I believe that American inventiveness and ingenuity will within the next few years bring about advances as yet unheard of.” Mentioning specifically the year of Skinner’s personal visit might suggest a hint of proprietorial pride: Michael Murray [Marcel Dupré, The Work of a Master Organist. Boston: Northeastern Music Press, 1985, p. 132] writes that Dupré had gone so far as to convey to him in a personal conversation that, during the mid 1920s, he had “helped Skinner introduce electricity” to organs in Paris. This is an extraordinary claim and not without smugness. Skinner recounted his 1924 trip in Stop, Open and Reed, his company’s house publication, volume 2 (1924). Of Dupré, he writes, “M. Marcel Dupré is a vitally alive musical personality. His interest in the ancient organs is great but he is equally interested in the modern organ. He does not glorify the past to the disparagement of the present. Our American Orchestral Color has received the entire approval and indorsement [sic] of M. Marcel Dupré. He leaves no room for doubt in his admiration for it. His use of it will make a further contribution to organ literature unless I am very much mistaken.”

Skinner found the Cavaillé-Coll factory “absolutely destitute” of modern machinery. “Everything done by hand. No electric or tubular actions . . . There is much prejudice in France against doing anything new.” Elsewhere, “The French Organ is a work of art and a great one, tho [sic] according to our present day standards very crude mechanically . . . The inconvenience of the French console is inconceivable.”

At the time of Skinner’s trip, Convers was new in his position, having only recently succeeded Charles Mutin. Skinner liked Convers and considered him a good man to bring the company out of the dark ages. In the event, the electric action instruments produced by Manufacture d’orgues Cavaillé-Coll, Mutin, A. Convers et Cie. proved unreliable and the company was bankrupt by 1928. In noting the year 1924, Dupré is probably simply taking credit for introducing Skinner to Convers at the factory, Skinner presumably being encouraging of Convers’s novel path. In any case, Skinner himself takes no credit for any substantive involvement with electric action in French instruments. Given the tone of Stop, Open and Reed, had this been so, he certainly would have.

12. This translation may be drier than Dupré intended to convey. His term here is ingénieurs spécialisés. The noun ingénieur translates directly as engineer, but the association of the root with the quality of inventiveness might be borne in mind: the verb ingénier means to strive; the noun ingéniosité means ingenenuity.

13. This is misleading. Hope-Jones’s earliest work was the 1887 rebuilding, with electric
action, of the organ at the church of Saint John, Birkenhead, where he was organist and choirmaster. In 1897 he completed a total rebuild of the 1875 Hill organ in McEwan Hall at the University of Edinburgh: though unquestionably a glimpse of things to come and indeed decked out with such novelties as Tibia Clausa, Diapason Phonon, Kinura, and Diaphone—high pressure, unblending stops of extreme scale that would later find their proper place in the Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra—it could no more properly be characterized as a theatre organ than the Worcester Cathedral rebuild of the previous year.

14. The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company started in Cincinnati in 1853 but relocated to North Tonawanda, New York, in 1908.

15. Dupré’s characterization is not quite right and more than a little hyperbolic. Although Hill got the ball rolling as early as 1840 at Birmingham Town Hall with his celebrated Grand Ophicleide on 15′′, high-pressure reed voicing was developed by American builders considerably beyond that of the English. A metre is 39′′ in Imperial units; Harrison and Harrison tubas were typically voiced on 12′′ to 15′′. At Salisbury (1877), Father Willis’s Tuba was on 18′′; a generation later, Harrison and Harrison’s at Ely (1908) were still on [only] 20′′. Liverpool Cathedral (1912–1926) and Westminster Cathedral (1920–1932), both by Willis III, with whom Dupré and Skinner were associated, do have Tubas on 30′′ (and Liverpool has a Tuba Magna on 50′′), but they are the exception, and by that point Willis III and Skinner were long acquaintances. We can be grateful that Hope-Jones’s proposal at Worcester to mount a Tuba over the Canons’ stalls on 100′′ was not carried out.

16. A bad demonstration by an enthusiastic incumbent?

17. Both William Haskell and his father Charles worked for the Roosevelt firm. When his father established his own firm, C. S. Haskell, William left Roosevelt to work with his father; he subsequently established William E. Haskell Co. of Philadelphia in 1901. That firm was acquired by Estey, whereupon William became superintendent of the Estey pipe division.

18. This may be a reference to Skinner’s second visit to England in 1924, where he met Henry Willis III. The trip is considered a turning point in Skinner’s tonal philosophy, whereupon he reevaluated the place of quint mixtures in the ensemble and began drastically expanding his chorus work.

19. An extreme example might be Ernest White’s essay at St. George’s Episcopal Church, New York City (Möller, 1958): of 96 ranks, two are unison principal stops.

20. Dupré exaggerates only slightly. Expanded 1911–1917 and 1924–1930, the Wanamaker organ now has 464 ranks, 401 stops, and 28,750 pipes.

Michał Szostak

Michał Szostak, Polish organist, researcher, and author, completed a doctorate degree in organ performance in February 2019. He studied organ performance at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw with Andrzej Chorosiński, as well as organ improvisation at the Pontificio Istituto Ambrosiano di Musica Sacra in Milan with Davide Paleari. He regularly performs organ recitals in Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, and has recorded three CDs. His organological research is regularly published by Polish and international organ magazines. From 2011–2018 he was the music director and principal organist of the Basilica in Licheń Stary. For further information: www.michalszostak.org.

Between 2002 and 2007, in Licheń Stary, near the geographical center of Poland, the Polish organbuilder Zakłady Organowe Zych built a monumental instrument of 157 stops. Designed by Andrzej Chorosiński, the instrument is now the largest organ in Poland and is controlled by a six-manual console.

Licheń Stary has a population of approximately 1,500 people. After World War II, priests of the order of the Marian Fathers promoted the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary here, centered around a small seventeenth-century oil painting of the Blessed Virgin. The ever-increasing number of pilgrims visiting the village could not be accommodated in the small local church housing the painting.

The Marian Fathers decided to build a new and larger church for the painting and pilgrims, an edifice that would become a minor basilica and consequently the largest church edifice in Poland. Construction began in 1992, and Pope Saint John Paul II blessed the building in 1999, though construction continued into 2002. The size of the basilica is 3,237,000 cubic feet, and the usable area is 247,600 square feet. The length of the nave is approximately 456 feet, while the width of the transept with uneven shoulder lengths is approximately 472 feet.¹ With the completion of construction there was a need to equip the interior with liturgical elements, including a pipe organ.

The motivator of the pipe organ project was Reverend Eugeniusz Makulski, MIC, a great lover of organ music and the person most responsible for the construction of the shrine. In mid-2002, when construction of the basilica was nearly complete, Father Makulski finalized the plans that would lead to the construction of a pipe organ to adorn the monumental interior. He decided the organ must be exceptional and worthy of the largest church in Poland; it would have at least 100 stops with a beautiful and noble sound and visual appearance. The other stipulation was that at least some of the instrument had to be playable by June 14, 2003.²

After analyzing various organbuilders’ bids, the Marian Fathers entrusted the project to the firm of Zakłady Organowe Zych. The signing of the contract for the construction of the first part of the organ, the instrument for the west gallery, took place on August 21, 2002.

The organ firm, headed by Dariusz Zych, had to rely on acoustical plans for the instrument concept to avoid disappointments and surprises at the final stage of this work. The starting point for the development of the whole specification by Andrzej Chorosiński was the unrealized project by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll for Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.³ Based on the measured analysis of the acoustic parameters of the basilica, Chorosiński began to develop the specification of the organ and the composition of stops. The fact that the Licheń Basilica has five galleries (one in the main nave, two in the west and east aisles, and two galleries in the sanctuary), gave rise to the concept of creating a spatial sound unit composed of five elements. The great organ of the basilica has been placed in the southern, western, and eastern parts of the church. The project was completed with two Chancel Positives on two small balconies at both presbytery gables, where the apse connects to the main nave. The scales of the stops, as well as the compositions of composite stops (mixtures, etc.), were individually developed by Chorosiński.

Zakłady Organowe Zych accomplished all design work, construction of organ cases, windchests, key and stop actions, wooden ranks and wooden resonators of reeds, as well as assembly of all elements, voicing, and tuning. Subcontractor companies that were commissioned to carry out specific assignments included: KOART Krzysztof Cieplak (structures made of stainless steel), Otto Heuss GmbH from Lich, Germany (consoles, electronics, Zimbelstern, tubular bells), Aug. Laukhuff GmbH & Co. KG from Weikersheim, Germany (West Organ façade pipes), Jacques Stinkens
Orgelpijpenmakers BV from Zeist, the Netherlands (façade pipes for the South Organ), Süddeutsche Orgelpfeifenfabrik Roland Killinger GmbH from Freiberg on the River Neckar, Germany (reeds for West Organ, East and West Positives), Orguian Lda. from Avidos, Portugal (reeds for the South Organ), and Ryszard Chacinski from Kobylka near Warsaw (metal labial stops). Decorative elements adorning the organ cases were carved in wood by Janusz Regulski and Tomasz Kusnierz from Sochaczew near Warsaw, and then gilded in the goldsmith’s workshop of Henryk Kwiatkowski from Poznań.

All assembly, voicing, and tuning were completed before July 2, 2006, so that during the solemn Mass that day, when the famous painting of Our Lady of Licheń was introduced to the basilica, a fully prepared instrument could be heard. Thousands of pilgrims from all over the world took part in the ceremony of transferring the image to its new home.

One month later, on August 1, 2006, there was a technical and artistic reception of the completed organ made by a commission consisting of representatives of the Marian Fathers, organbuilders, organists, and musicologists, who were all very pleased with the work. The acceptance protocol was signed by members of the commission composed of Rev. Wiktor Gumienny, MIC, Father Superior of the Licheń Shrine; Professor Urlich Grosser, German conductor and organist; Professor Roberto Padoin, organist and professor at the Conservatory B. Marcello in Venice; Reverend Dr. Jacek Paczkowski, chairman of the church music committee of the Diocese of Kalisz; Reverend Dr. Mariusz Klimek, director of the Church Music Study of the Diocese of Torun; Siegfried Sauer, organbuilder from Germany; Adam Klarecki, organist of the Wloclawek cathedral; Jacek Łukasik and Robert Grudzien, organists; and Jaroslaw Adamiak, then organist of the Licheń Shrine. Artistic decoration of the cases took nearly another year, and the dedication of the organ took place on the first anniversary of the transfer to the basilica of the famous painting of Our Lady of Licheń on July 2, 2007, during a Mass celebrated by Bishop Wieslaw Alojzy Mering.

Description of the organ

The organ of the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń comprises 157 stops, 12,323 pipes, and five “organs” (in the chronology of construction): the West Organ, the South Organ (located in three organ cases on the same gallery above the main entrance), the East Organ, the East Chancel Positive, and the West Chancel Positive. The South Organ and the West Organ are fully independent instruments and have their own consoles. The East Organ and both Chancel Positives do not have their own consoles and can be played only from the main console. An organist playing from the main console has eleven independent divisions from which to choose. The key action is mechanical-electric, while the stop action is electric; windchests are slider and pallet, and the alloys of pipe metals contain tin up to 85–90%. All divisions of the instrument have a manual compass of C–c4 and pedal compass of C–g1. The layout of all parts of the organ throughout the basilica is presented in Figure 1.

The South Organ

The core of the whole organ of the Licheń Basilica is the South Organ, which contains the principal divisions of the instrument. The South Organ is the second in chronological order of construction, built between mid-2003 and 2005. This eighty-one-stop instrument with four manuals has a typical sound arrangement for the nineteenth-century French Romantic period: Grand-Orgue, Positif, Récit-expressif, and Pédale. In addition there is a high-pressure Solo division placed on Manual IV. In each division one finds a full set of basic stops (Jeux de Fonds) in the form of principals, flutes, and strings, as well as stops—according to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s nomenclature—available (Jeux de Combinaisons) in the form of mutations, mixtures, cornets, and reeds.

The console is placed centrally in the organ case and on a multi-stage elevation. Registers are placed on either side of the keydesk: on the left side for the Pédale and Grand-Orgue, on the right side for the Positif, Récit-expressif, and the Solo division. The stop action is electric, while the key action is mechanical (for the majority of the Grand-Orgue, Positif, Récit-expressif, and Pédale windchests) and electric (for the entire Solo division, as well as selected portions of the Grand-Orgue, Positif, Récit-expressif, Pédale windchests, and double pallets for bass notes). The Récit-expressif section is enclosed in a swell box controlled by a balanced shoe with electric action; next to the expression shoe is a crescendo roller, which allows seamless dynamic changes. The player sits with his back to the main altar, and the console has a solid-state combination action system with an extensive storage capacity.

The South Organ consists of three separate organ cases placed on the same gallery on the axes of the main and side naves and is anchored on a twenty-ton steel structure. Architecturally, the cases are inspired by the organ case built between 1999 and 2003 by Schoenstein & Co. for the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. A great majority of the façade pipes are speaking pipes. The main case contains the Grand-Orgue, Positif, Récit-expressif, Solo, and most of the Pédale division. In the side cases there are windchests for several Pédale stops (divided on C and C-sharp sides).

Each side case has its own small blower and a separate wind system. The wind system of the main South Organ’s section is fed by three electric blowers: the first blower feeds the Grand-Orgue, Positif, and Pédale, the second feeds the Récit-expressif, and the third feeds the high-pressure Solo division.

The South Organ contains the tallest open wood pipes of the whole organ, which belong to the Pédale 32′ Subcontrabasse, a principal stop. In this section there is also a second 32′ stop, the Contrabombard, the tallest reed resonators in the organ. The instrument also contains the largest tin pipes of the Licheń organ, located in the central organ case. The largest has a length of 25-1⁄2 feet, a diameter of one foot, and weighs 330 pounds.

The West Organ

The West Organ, placed on the gallery above the left transept of the basilica above the Pieta Porch, was built between August 2002 and June 2003. This two-manual instrument includes 51 stops enhanced with Zimbelstern and Tympan imitating the sound of a storm (Pédale d’Orage). Registers are placed at either side of the keydesk: on the left for the Pedal and the Hauptwerk sections, on the right side for the Schwellwerk division and additional devices. The instrument contains both mechanical and electric-action chests, double pallets for low keys, and electric stop action. All couplers are electric. As in the South Organ, the Schwellwerk is enclosed in a box managed by a balanced expression shoe with electric action, in addition to a crescendo roller. The console, slightly elevated, is centrally integrated into the organ case. The player sits with his back to the main altar, and the console features an extensive solid-state combination action.

The specification of the West Organ is slightly non-standard, divided between two manuals and pedal. Initially, it was planned that this instrument would have three manuals, however, due to the constraints imposed by basilica architect, Barbara Bielecka, on the dimensions of the organ case, it was decided to limit the number of manual divisions while maintaining a wealth of stops. In each section there is a full range of principals (in the Hauptwerk based at 16′, in the Schwellwerk at 8′, in the Pedal at 16′), enriched with flute stops of all types, strings, and reeds. In the Pedal section there is one 32′ stop, a stopped wood Bourdon. All divisions have mutation stops (2-2⁄3′, 1-3⁄5′, 1-1⁄3′, 8⁄9′) and at least one mixture (in the Hauptwerk there are two mixtures and a cornet). This instrument was conceived for performing Baroque pieces; however, thanks to a large number of foundation stops (as many as eleven manual stops, i.e., 30%, are at 8′), Romantic and symphonic pieces also work well. In the West Organ are also placed tubular bells with a compass from g to g2.

The placement of pipe flats in the organ case reflects the arrangement of the divisions inside the instrument. In the central part of the case (three double flats, each crowned with a group of small pipes) we see the Hauptwerk, the Schwellwerk above it (another three double flats, each crowned with a group of small pipes, the wooden shutters of the swell box located just behind the façade), and two symmetrical pedal towers—left side C, right side C-sharp. The façade pipes belong to the 16′ Principal from the Hauptwerk and the independent 16′ Principal from the Pedal. The organ weighs a total of thirty tons.

The blessing and dedication of the West Organ took place on June 14, 2003, by Bishop Roman Andrzejewski, while the inaugural concert was performed by Andrzej Chorosiński. The event, which was very popular with the media, attracted many outstanding guests from around the world.

The East Organ

The East Organ, built between September 2005 and 2006, is housed in twin towers with trapezoidal bases placed between high windows on the east gallery, which crowns the right transept of the basilica over the Four Evangelists’ Porch. The instrument has eight stops; the key and stop action are electric, and the windchests are slider and pallet. Looking from the center of the basilica, the left tower contains two windchests, placed one above the other, with C side pipes, while the right tower is similar with C-sharp side pipes.

The external structure of the organ cases reflects the internal arrangement of windchests for flue pipes. Each case has two main pipe flats separated by horizontal resonators of the Trumpets (16′, 8′, and 4′) and one small set of pipes at the very top, which are dummy pipes. Both towers are supplied by one blower that is placed in the left tower; the channel supplying air to the right tower runs along the gallery floor. The whole instrument is supplied with air under high pressure. As a result of this treatment, the volume of the eight stops of the East Organ is equivalent to the sound of fifty-one stops along with the super-octave couplers of the West Organ. This instrument can only be played from the main console and may be assigned to any of the six keyboards and pedalboard.

The West Chancel Positive

Built in 2006, the West Chancel Positive, with seven stops (plus Nachtigall), has electric key and stop action. Everything, including the blower, is enclosed in a single case, a mirror image of the East Chancel Positive. This instrument does not have a separate console, but rather is played from the main console only, as a floating division. This section, richly equipped with string stops, perfectly matches the ethereal voices of the Récit-expressif section of the South Organ. With proper registration, it surrounds the listener with the impression of “heavenly voices” (Vox Coelestis).

The East Chancel Positive

The East Chancel Positive was completed in 2006 and features eight stops constructed with early Baroque scaling and electric key and stop action. The whole instrument is enclosed in a single case like the West Chancel Positive. This division also does not have a separate console, but is a floating division of the main console. The disposition of this instrument was inspired by early Baroque Flemish organs and pairs well with the West Organ. With proper registration and manual changes, the East Chancel Positive and the West Organ can produce dialogue effects, concertino and tutti, in a manner characteristic of instrumental concertos of the Baroque era.

Where are the largest pipe organs in Europe?

On the basis of the criterion of organ classification in terms of size (i.e., number of ranks and auxiliary devices managed from one console) published by the author in 2017 in Polish⁴ and English⁵ literature on the subject, the organ of the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń is the largest instrument in Poland, the fourth largest in Europe, and the thirteenth largest in the world. Among ecclesiastical organs, it is the tenth largest instrument and has one of the largest consoles in the world. The console of the Licheń organ is also the largest console among Polish organs and is one of the largest consoles in Europe.

The organist playing from the main console has a total of eleven fully independent divisions: nine manual divisions and two pedal divisions. Most divisions can be assigned at will on the six manuals and pedalboard, allowing ultimate flexibility.

The monumental main console is located in the sanctuary of the basilica. The lowest manual keyboard has the deepest key movement, while the top keyboard, the shallowest. The manual keyboards, moving from the lowest to the highest, are inclined at increasing angles. The main console is connected to all sections by a wired computer network and MIDI system. For each of the main console’s keyboards and pedalboard, it is possible to assign each section of the West Organ, the East Organ, the West Chancel Positive, the East Chancel Positive, and Manual IV of the South Organ. The Grand-Orgue, Positif, Récit-expressif, and Pédale from the South Organ can be assigned only to manuals I, II, III, and pedalboard on the main console (plus standard section couplers within the South Organ).

The console is equipped with two balanced expression pedals to control two swell boxes (right, Schwellwerk of the West Organ; left, Récit-expressif of the South Organ). On the left side of the expressive pedals, there is a crescendo roller with two pre-programmed crescendos (smooth or stepwise). The console is equipped with a separate solid-state memory system; it has a cut-out switch for all reeds, as well as Tutti and General Tutti switches and General Cancel. The console was made in the workshop of Otto Heuss GmbH and is a work of art.

Conclusion

The course of history is surprising when considering a proposal for a project in 1875 by one of the greatest organbuilders of all times intended for the largest Catholic church in the world inspires the creation of a new organ 130 years later in the largest basilica of Poland, a country that did not even exist on the maps of Europe when Aristide Cavaillé-Coll lived. Though Cavaillé-Coll invited many great personalities from the world of politics, the Vatican authorities did not manage to materialize the project at Saint Peter’s Basilica; yet a priest in a relatively poor country with the support of countless pilgrims offering their small donations for this purpose did. Really, history can be amazing!

Several compact discs of organ music have been recorded so far on the organ of the Licheń Basilica. In 2003, Andrzej Chorosiński recorded organ literature, which was the first recording of the West Organ. In 2007, a Belgian organist of Polish descent, Karol Golebiowski, recorded a second album with the entire organ. In September 2017 the author recorded the third album, Ave Regina Caelorum, including improvisations on Gregorian and Polish Marian themes in two Romantic cyclic forms: organ symphony and symphonic poem on the South Organ. In June 2018 he recorded the fourth album, French Inspirations: the Second Half of the 19th Century, including literature of Franck, Lefébure-Wély, Lemmens, Guilmant, and an improvised five-movement organ symphony. (These last two discs can be found on eBay.)

I cordially invite you to Licheń Stary, where one can hear and see the largest organ in the largest ecclesiastical interior of Poland.

Notes

1. Krzysztof Jedrzejewski, Przewodnik po Sanktuarium Lichenskimm (Licheń Stary, Zaklad Gospodarczy “Dom Pielgrzyma,” 2014), p. 181.

2. Organy Licheński (Licheń Stary, Zaklad Gospodarczy “Dom Pielgrzyma,” 2007), p. 22.

3. For more information on this organ proposal, see Ronald Ebrecht’s book, Cavaillé-Coll’s Monumental Organ Project for Saint Peter’s, Rome: Bigger than Them All (Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2011).

4. Michal Szostak, “Wielkie organy Bazyliki w Licheniu w zestawieniu z najwiekszymi organami swiata,” Wokol nowych organow w kosciele NSPJ w Tarnowie, ed. Pawl Pasternak (Tarnów, Poland, Biblos, 2017, ISBN 978-83-7793-504-0), and Michal Szostak, Lichenskie organy na tle najwiekszych instrumentow Polski, Europy i swiata (Licheń Stary, Zaklad Gospodarczy “Dom Pielgrzyma,” 2017, ISBN 978-83-64126-14-7).

5. Michal Szostak, “The World’s Largest Organs,” The Organ, No. 382, November 2017–January 2018, ISSN 0030-4883, pp. 12–28.

Specification of the organ:

South Organ

GRAND-ORGUE (Manual I)

16′ Montre

16′ Bourdon

8′ Montre

8′ Flûte Harmonique

8′ Gamba

8′ Kopula

8′ Dolce

5-1⁄3′ Quinte

4′ Prestant

4′ Flute

4′ Salicet

2-2⁄3′ Quinte

2′ Doublette

1-3⁄5′ Tierce

IV Gr. Fourniture

IV Mixtur

V Gr. Cymbel

IV Cymbel

16′ Bombarde

16′ Fagot

8′ Trompet

8′ Hautbois

4′ Clairon

IV–I

III–I

II–I

POSITIF (Manual II)

16′ Violon

8′ Diapason

8′ Flûte Harmonique

8′ Salicional

4′ Prestant

4′ Flûte

4′ Viole

2-2⁄3′ Quinte

2′ Piccolo

III Sesquialtera

V Plein Jeu

III Scharf

16′ Dulcjan

8′ Cromorne

8′ Clarinette

8′ Jannhorn

Tremolo

IV–II

III–II

Recit-expressif (Manual III, enclosed)

16′ Bourdon

8′ Montre

8′ Flûte Traversiere

8′ Rurflet

8′ Gamba

8′ Voix Celeste

4′ Prestant

4′ Flûte Traversiere

4′ Viola

2-2⁄3′ Nazard

2′ Doublette

V Cornet

IV–V Fourniture

16′ Basson

8′ Trompet

8′ Hautbois

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Clairon Harm.

Tremolo

IV–III

SOLO (Manual IV, enclosed)

8′ Flauto Major

8′ Gamba

8′ Keraulophon

V Cornet

8′ Tuba Mirabilis

Pedale

32′ Subcontrabasse

16′ Contrabasse

16′ Violonbasse

16′ Subbass

10-2⁄3′ Quintbass

8′ Octavbass

8′ Flûte

8′ Flûtebass

8′ Cello

4′ Choral

2′ Ocarina

III Sesquialtera

V Hintersatz

IV Mixtur

32′ Contrabombard

16′ Bombard

10-2⁄3′ Quinttrompet

8′ Trompet

4′ Clairon

IV–P

III–P

II–P

I–P

West Organ

HAUPTWERK (Manual I)

16′ Prinzipal

8′ Octave

8′ Holzflöte

8′ Bourdon

8′ Gamba

8′ Gemshorn

4′ Oktave

4′ Szpicflet

4′ Viola

2-2⁄3′ Quinte

2′ Superoctave

1′ Flageolet

V Cornet

V Mixtur

IV Mixtur

16′ Trompet

8′ Trompet

4′ Trompet

II–I

Super I

SCHWELLWERK (Manual II, enclosed)

16′ Quintadena

8′ Prinzipal

8′ Rohrflöte

8′ Salicet

4′ Prestant

4′ Traversflöte

4′ Gemshorn

2-2⁄3′ Nazard

2′ Oktave

2′ Piccolo

1-3⁄5′ Terz

1-1⁄3′ Larigot

8⁄9′ None

V Scharf

16′ Dulcian

8′ Krummhorn

8′ Clarinette

Tremolo

Tubular Bells

PEDAL

32′ Bourdon

16′ Prinzipal

16′ Subbass

16′ Violonbass

8′ Oktavbass

8′ Fletbass

8′ Cello

4′ Choral

4′ Bourdon

II Sesquialtera

IV Mixtur

16′ Bombard

16′ Fagott

8′ Trompet

4′ Clairon

II–P

Super I–P

I–P

Zimbelstern

Tympan

East Organ

8′ Diapason

8′ Gedeckt

4′ Prestant

2′ Oktave

III–IV Cymbel

16′ Tuba Magna

8′ Tuba Mirabilis

4′ Clairon

West Chancel Positive

8′ Vox Humana (labial, 2 ranks)

8′ Gamba

8′ Aeolina

8′ Vox coelestis

4′ Prinzipal

4′ Fugara

III Harmonia Aeth.

Nachtigall (nightingale)

Tremolo

East Chancel Positive

8′ Gedeckt

4′ Prinzipal

4′ Hohlfloete

4′ Quintade

2′ Dezchen

III Zimbel

8′ Regal

4′ Zink

Tremolo

Olena Matselyukh

Olena Matselyukh is an organ performer for the Lviv Organ and Chamber Music Hall, as well as a soloist of the Lviv and Rivne Philharmonic orchestras. She has concertized throughout Ukraine, as well as continental Europe. In 2017 Olena Matselyukh opened the Bach Festival in Brno, Czech Republic, and Wrocław, Poland. In Poland, she has performed at several other festivals, including “Music in Old Kraków.” Matseliukh has recorded CDs—Benedictus and Amazing Grace—as well as recordings of the works of composer Bohdan Kotyuk—Reflections and Mood and Spirits—and the compact disc Syrinx with Ihor Matselyukh on the pan flute.

Matselyukh is trained as a musician and a scientist, and her research in the domain of the organ is regularly published in Ukrainian and foreign journals. As a doctoral student of the oldest university in the Czech Republic, Moravian Palacký University in Olomouc, she has researched her doctoral dissertation on “The Sacred and profane in the organ creativity of the composers of Ukraine and the Czech Republic.”

Olena Matselyukh was artistic director of the VI. and VII. International Festivals of Organ Music “Diapazon,” which took place in the Lviv Organ and Chamber Music Hall in October 2016 and July 2017. For the Lviv Philharmonic, she is the founder and director of the international summer festival “Pizzicato e cantabile” and the international festival “Music in Old Lviv.” She is the producer and co-organizer of the international festivals of organ music in Rivne and Chernivtsi—“Musica viva Organum 2018.”

The origin of the organ and organbuilding in Lviv, Ukraine

Christianity played a fundamental role in the formation and development of Ukrainian society. The existence of an organ in Ukraine is noted on a fresco in Saint Sophia’s Church, founded in 1037 by Prince Yaroslav the Wise.¹ In western Ukraine, the organ and instrumental music played a major role in the church.

In 1240, Kyiv was destroyed during the Tatar-Mongol invasion, and the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, Prince Roman, united the Halychyna and Volyn principalities into a new unified state, which became Kyivan Rus. Thus, western Ukraine became a center of the cultivation of Christian artistic and musical traditions. The son of Roman, Danylo Halytskyi, founded the city of Lviv, which he named after his son Lev. In Dorogychin (Polissya Volyn), Prince Danylo received the royal crown, which was subsequently inherited by Leo.

Historians associate the introduction of the organ to Lviv with the reign of King Lev and his wife, Hungarian Princess Constance. Queen Constance invited monks of the Dominican order to Lviv, and the Dominicans brought an organ to the city.

The first mention of Lviv organist Peter Engelbrecht is found in the archives of the Latin Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1405. The organ tablature of Lviv musician Luke (d. 1532), dated 1530, is the oldest example of organ music notation in Eastern Europe. The tablature is now kept in an archive in Warsaw, Poland. Leszek Mazepa, a researcher of Lviv music history, lists the names of twenty-two musicians from the fifteenth to the first half of the sixteenth centuries, pointing out that in Lviv at that time organists were also virginalists, harpsichordists, and musicians playing all manner of keyboard instruments, including the regal and positive organs.²

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, court organists Bartholomew Cavinsky, Jakob Leydens, and the brothers Stanislav and Jan Kindlarsky were also organbuilders. They created instruments not only for Lviv and the Lviv Kingdom, but also exported them abroad.

According to researcher Jerzy Golos, Mykhailo Sadkovskyi built a new organ for the Dominican Church of Corpus Christi in Lviv between 1765 and 1766. This is one of the most prominent names in Lviv organbuilding of the eighteenth century.³

Lviv organ builders of the nineteenth century

The leading Lviv organbuilder of the nineteenth century was Jakub Kramkovsky (18th century–ca. 1840). He built the three most prominent organs of the era for Lviv, found in the Franciscan Church (25 stops, 1806), the Dominican Church (26 stops, 1808), and the Bernardine Church (33 stops, 1812).

Roman Dukhenskyi (ca. 1800–ca. 1870) started a career as an organbuilder in Warsaw and Krakow, and by the 1830s he had already built organs for the Jesuit monks in Stanislav and Lviv. Among the most interesting instruments he built was a two-manual organ for the Carmelite Church.

The Church of Saint Mary Magdalene was founded in Lviv in 1615. It was built on Holy George Mountain outside Renaissance Lviv and was regularly strengthened, rebuilt, and expanded as a defensive stronghold. While it is known that the church housed organs, no information about the first organs has survived.

Today this Baroque edifice functions in a twofold manner: as a Catholic church and as an organ hall. Lviv organist Antony Clement (ca. 1837–ca. 1897) built an organ in 1863 in the old village of Vovkiv (14 miles from Lviv), which was moved to St. Mary Magdalene Church in 1930. Subsequently, this organ was moved to the Catholic church of the town of Bohorodchany. In its place in 1936, the firm Rieger Kloss installed its Opus 3375, which remains the largest in Ukraine.

Among the Lviv organbuilders who worked at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were Romuald Bochensky, Jan Grocholsky, Tomasz Fall, and Bartholomew Zemiansky. All of them were professionally trained in either Leipzig, Vienna, or Kraków.

There is also a close connection between Lviv and Czech organbuilders, as evidenced not only by the organ of Saint Mary Magdalene Cathedral, built in the Moravian Krsno, but also by the presence of students of the most prominent Lviv organbuilder, Jan Sliwinsky—in particular, Rudolf Haase and Franciszek Gajda, who came from the Czech Republic.

Among the Lviv organbuilders is the family of Zebrovsky,⁴ with the last generation represented by the brothers Aleksandr and Kazymyr. Notable instruments include the organ of the Bernardine Church (33 stops, 1898), which was destroyed in the 1960s by Communists, though the façade still serves as a decoration of the church interior.

Among Kazymyr’s notable work is the organ of the Armenian Catholic Church, as well as an instrument in the Dominican church. With the advent of the Communist regime after the Second World War, this organ was destroyed. The pipes and the façade were saved thanks to the efforts of young enthusiasts. Now they decorate the concert hall of Stanislav Liudkevych, home to the Lviv Philharmonic.

Jan Sliwinsky (1844–1903) and his organ factory in Lviv

Little reliable information about Jan Sliwinsky’s early years has survived.⁵ He was born in the town of Pistyn in Pokuttia and at the age of nineteen went to Warsaw and participated in the January uprising of 1863. It is likely that the repercussions that befell the perpetrators of the anti-Russian uprising forced the young man to flee Warsaw. At first Sliwinsky headed to Vienna and then moved to France, returning to his homeland thirteen years later. From advertisements that he later published for the sale of organs, one can make a fairly integral picture of the life of the most prominent Lviv organbuilder.

From his earliest years as a child, his sphere of interests included organ construction. In his printed catalog, he wrote, “My love and enthusiasm for the organ arose at a very early age. From my youth I tried to learn as much as possible about the structure and function of the organ. I constantly felt the need to acquire knowledge in this profession.” Elsewhere in the same catalog, the master recalled his woodworking and joinery training.

Such a way to approach building organs was quite natural for a beginner. Woodworkers and joiners have long been highly valued for their skills in construction of musical instruments. After finishing an elementary education in his homeland (most likely in Lviv), young Sliwinsky went abroad, which meant leaving Halychyna. From documents describing the participants of regional organ exhibitions, one can infer that natives from Halychyna who worked outside their homeland participated in the exhibition process on an equal footing with the local masters of organbuilding. Most often, these were Halychyna natives who worked in France or in Vienna.

There is no information as to where Jan Sliwinsky continued his studies, but there is evidence that he worked for Aristide Cavaillé-Coll for several years. Between 1872 and 1876, Sliwinsky worked at Le Vigan (in the department Gard), where he independently built a twelve-stop organ for the Church of Saint Pierre.

The acquired experience allowed him to become a manager of one of the offices of the Cavaillé-Coll firm outside Paris for a few years. After his marriage, Vincent Cavaillé-Coll, Aristide’s brother, left the leadership of the office of the company in the city of Nîmes in the south of France, and Jan Sliwinsky was subsequently appointed manager.

Most likely, Jan Sliwinsky’s business in France was not successful, because in a year and a half, his branch sold only two organs. Jan Sliwinsky thus returned to Halychyna and started his own business in Lviv.

From its inception, Jan Sliwinsky’s firm was popular both in Lviv and throughout Halychyna. Some of the first organs he built for Lviv were located at Saint Mary Snizhna and Saint Kasimir Under the High Castle. Another important work for the firm was the radical restructuring of the organ in the Garrison Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the center of Lviv, which was under the leadership of Jesuit priests. In his price lists, Sliwinsky identified the following: four-stop organs were sold at 650 zloty, and large ones—up to thirty stops and three-manuals—for 12,000 zloty. Each instrument was custom designed and built. The acoustics of the church in which it was to be installed were studied as well.

Organ factories were highly successful around this time. Whether Roman Duchensky’s firm was still functioning is unknown, but the firms of Romuald Bohensky and Antony Clement, which worked simultaneously with the factory of Jan Sliwinsky, never achieved any such scope nor such publicity in their activities.

Around 1888, Jan Sliwinsky bought a house at Copernicus St., 16 to serve his growing business. It was rebuilt for the new owner by one of the most famous Ukrainian architects of Lviv, Ivan Levinskyi (1851–1919).

Organs built by Sliwinsky were installed relatively far afield: from Leipzig to Tbilisi, from Chisineu to Vilnius. But, of course, the vast majority of orders came from regional Halychyna parishes. In 1900, for the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), a two-manual and pedal, twenty-four-register instrument was installed.

Among Jan Sliwinsky’s seventy-four organs built for installation in Eastern Halychyna, only two instruments function today: one is in the Latin Roman Catholic cathedral in Lviv, and the other is in the city parish church in Sambir. Together with the ones in Western Halychyna, where the instruments were much better preserved (particularly in Krakow, Tarnow, Rzeszów, and Zamość), Jan Sliwinsky built more than 110 organs.

In the 1890s, this organbuilder also started selling pianos, with plans to eventually manufacture his own. The realization of this plan was thwarted by an accident he suffered in 1903. While tuning an organ he fell from the scaffolding and never recovered. He died in pain and was buried in the Lychakiv cemetery (field 51) in Lviv.

Jan Sliwinsky’s organs were notable for their quality construction. Selected varieties of wood were chosen that naturally dried well. The winding mechanism of the instruments was simple and reliable, and each register received copious air. For his large organs, the master used pneumatic machines similar to the Barker system, which allowed the easy coupling of manuals and registers with each other.

In his catalog, Jan Sliwinsky wrote: “The mathematical dimension of each pipe (the organ labial tube) has been brought to such perfection that it is possible to get the desired tone at once. This is my secret, which I learned during years of long studies.”

Music education in Lviv

With the arrival of the first organs in Lviv came the issue of how to train organists to play them. Again the initiative to teach organ performance was undertaken by the Dominican Fathers. In 1495, in the town of Belz, 62 miles north of Lviv, was founded a school for organists. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, the students of this school worked as organists in Lviv churches.⁶ Leszek Mazepa, who has carefully studied the documents of available archival collections, states: “At the end of the sixteenth century, the best music program was found at the chapel of the Dominican Church, where in the years 1587–1595 several organists and several trumpeters worked simultaneously, and from 1623 there was also a church choir.”⁷ A new Lviv school for organists was founded in 1841 by Franciszek Bemm. The instruction was expected to last two years, and the school was designed to house fifteen to twenty students.

The Halychyna Society of Saint Cecilia, founded by Franz Xavier Mozart, brought about a change in the music school system in Lviv. The youngest of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sons, he dedicated twenty-eight years of his life to the musical culture of Lviv. The Society of Saint Cecilia supported professional activities of Lviv musicians and created an organization of mutual aid for organists,⁸ initially led by Father Leonard Soletsky. These two societies became the initiators of the founding of the Halychyna Conservatory.

The Golden Age of organ art in Lviv

Lviv was the only Ukranian city that could boast of organ art and organbuilding at a rather high level in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Fifty different organs sounded daily in Lviv churches. Lviv factories and individual workshops were busy building organs not only for Halychyna, but also for sacred edifices in various European cities. Along with the daily use of organs at Mass in Lviv churches, organ concerts were frequently presented. There were concerts by international artists in the Catholic churches of Saint Elizabeth and Saint Mary Magdalene. Saint Elizabeth’s organ was larger, though Saint Mary Magdalene had excellent acoustics and housed a more technically advanced instrument.

Organ music in Lviv is inseparable from the Catholic liturgy. At the end of the eighteenth century Lviv’s Protestants began to encourage use of the organ, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Evangelical church, located at the beginning of Zelena Street, began to host organ recitals. At the same time, Lviv composers who created music for the organ began to skillfully combine deep spirituality with secular elements in their compositions.

Formation of the Lviv Organ School

As organbuilding in Lviv began to flourish in the middle of the eighteenth century, Lviv organs were sufficiently sophisticated to satisfy the performing needs of organ literature as well as improvisation. The best-known composers of the Lviv Organ School were educated in European capitals, primarily in Vienna, Prague, and Paris. The influence of French composition is particularly noticeable in the creative work of Mieczysław Sołtys and Tadeusz Mahl. One can also note the influences of post-classical Viennese masters and the German Leipzig school. In addition, there are influences from Warsaw and Kraków.

Piano technique of the nineteenth century provided a significant foundation for the curriculum of the modern Lviv Organ School and its representatives in particular. Notable is the role of piano virtuoso Karol Mikula, and later, composer, pianist, and teacher Tadeusz Majerski. Lviv organist and composer Andriy Nikodemovych as well as pianist and organist Samuel Daych started their performance careers as pianists.

The creativity of Lviv composers who wrote music for the organ during the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries is less known to the general public. Unfortunately, it is still weakly promoted in Ukraine, and this problem still continues for modern Ukrainian organ composers.

Mieczysław Sołtys (1863–1929)

Mieczysław Sołtys played a special role in Lviv’s music milieu. He was born and died in Lviv, although his years as a mature professional musician and composer were connected with Vienna and Paris.^{4, 9} Sołtys was a composer, conductor, pianist, organist, teacher, and publicist. He began his music career at the Conservatory of the Halychyna Music Society, where his mentor was the founder and director of the Society and the Conservatory, virtuoso pianist, composer, conductor Karol Mikuli (1819–1897).

According to Halychyna tradition, Sołtys simultaneously received another education, studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jan Kazimierz Lviv University. Beginning in 1887, he studied music composition at Vienna Conservatory (Das Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien) and later at the Paris Conservatory, where he mastered organ and counterpoint with Eugène Gigout and composition with Camille Saint-Saëns.

After his completion of studies, Sołtys returned to Lviv in 1891 and became professor at the Conservatory of the Halychyna Music Society. He taught musical forms and conducting, as well as piano and organ. At the same time, his reputation as a music critic and publicist grew. Sołtys became the editor of several Lviv periodicals, such as Artistic News, Our Art, People’s Diary, and Lviv Courier.¹⁰

The formation of public opinion in the musical sphere of Lviv in the early twentieth century was based on the unsurpassed authority of Professor Sołtys. He was not only a notable composer and organist, but also a researcher of organ art. One of his most famous essays was the article, “The New Organ in the Bernardine Church.”

Tadeusz Majerski (1888–1963)

Another teacher, composer, and pianist who associated with Lviv was Tadeusz Majerski. A Lviv native, he studied philosophy at the university, and at the Lviv conservatory (1905–1911) studied piano and composition under Ludomir Różycki (1883–1953). In 1920 at the Conservatory of the Halychyna Music Society, Tadeusz Majerski was named a professor of piano. In 1927 he founded the Lviv Trio, with which he toured Europe, and he acted as a critic and publicist in the Lviv press. In the 1930s, Majerski was one of the first avant-garde composers to use dodecaphonic technique.

In 1931 Majerski founded a society of music and opera admirers in Lviv, and in 1939, with the arrival of the Soviets, he became one of the first professors of the Lviv State Conservatory. Majerski is referred to by Andriy Nikodemovych, who recalls: “When I was studying composition, I was assigned to the piano class of Professor Tadeusz Majerski. Getting to know this great personality and musician was a turning point for me. Piano classes with him helped me cure my injured arm, and I started playing again. A few years later, I finished my piano course and, thanks to my professor, started to perform as a pianist.”¹¹

Majerski did not betray Lviv even in the Soviet era when communist ideologists accused him of formalism, for which he was persecuted and subjected to political repression.¹² Majerski concentrated his compositions on purely instrumental, non-programmatic music. Along with avant-garde features in some of these works, folkloric inspirations are also found. Among Majerski’s compositions are Four Works for Organ, recorded on compact disc by Valery Korostelyov of Lviv in 2007.

Tadeusz Mahl (1922, Lviv–2003, Kraków)

Organist and composer Tadeusz Mahl combined the sacred and profane in a flexible and convincing way. Mahl lived in Lviv from birth until 1946, but he never stopped loving the city of his youth throughout his life. Here his aesthetic views and his maturity as a composer were formed. In Lviv, he wrote his first works, among which the oratorio Stabat Mater (1945) stands out. His love for Lviv was evident throughout his life, so much so that he dedicated his symphonic poem My City (1991) to Lviv, and his Sixth Symphony (1997) was in a sense inspired by Lviv. Evaluating the role and significance of Tadeusz Mahl’s creativity, Polish scholars refer to him as a representative of the group of Lviv-Kraków composers.¹³

Mahl’s works for organ solo and ensemble with organ occupy the most prominent place in his compositional output. Undoubtedly, the impetus of the formation of Mahl as an organist and composer was studying at the Lviv Music School (in particular under Adam Sołtys), as well as his time as organist at Saint Elizabeth’s Church in Lviv.

At the end of the Second World War, Mahl moved first to Szczecin and then to Kraków. French musical culture exerted a decisive influence on Mahl’s compositional style. At the end of the 1950s, as a scholarship grantee, he left for Paris. But he faced a choice: either follow the fashion of the avant-garde (which then prevailed in Poland) or seek his own way.¹⁴ Mahl’s choice did not fall on the rejection of traditions through a radical renewal of musical language, but on a renewed comprehension of post-Romanticism in organ sound. In his Parisian studies he focused on César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, Gabriel Fauré, and, of course, Johann Sebastian Bach.

Among the creative corpus of Mahl’s works are six symphonies, four symphonic poems, and nine concertos for various instruments with orchestra. This includes Concerto No. 6 for organ and two orchestras—a big band and a string orchestra. Nevertheless, his seven organ concertos, twenty-two works for organ solo, and a Requiem for mezzo-soprano, baritone, mixed choir, and organ (1981) stand out among Mahl’s output.¹⁵

The creative life of Tadeusz Mahl can be divided into three periods:

1. The neoclassical period (1940s–1950s), including his first Concerto for Organ and Symphony Orchestra (1950). This work, according to Bronisław Rutkowski, is a vivid example of how difficult it is to combine a multi-timbral organ palette with orchestral sound. Only in tutti sections are these self-sufficient antipodes found in a common language. Therefore, the critic even suggests titling this work Sinfonia Concertante;¹⁵

2. The sonoristic period (1960s–1970s), in which Mahl refers to various musical instruments in the genre of concert, but again the organ holds a central place. Among his works of this period is a triple concerto for two pianos and organ (1971);

3. The postmodernist period (after 1975), in which Mahl gives preference to religious motives or to the elements of Podhale folklore. During most of this period, he composed for organ alone. In these works, one can detect a maneuvering between profane essence and sacred spirituality.

According to researchers, Mahl’s creativity in organ composition takes its roots in improvisation.¹³ “His concertos are marked by an unconstrained narrative, contrasts between quick passages and meno mosso, which are most often associated with ritardandi and accelerandi, the contrast of sequences of toccata-like or fast sequences, recitative ad libitum, and cadenza constructions”—a professional characteristic of the formal and structural layout of this composer’s language given by the researcher of organ music R. Koval.¹⁵

The creativity of Mahl occupies a very special place in contemporary music and is important not only for Ukrainian and Polish cultures. Critical notes of Tadeusz Mahl, as well as his publications on the development of organ art, have been published in Lviv and Kraków. This is mentioned in the publication Society of supporters of Lviv and the south-eastern lands. The latest information on this subject was published in Kraków in 1995.¹⁶

Andriy Nikodemowych (January 2, 1925, Lviv–January 28, 2017, Lublin, Poland)

Ukrainian-Polish composer, teacher, pianist, and organist Andriy Nikodemovych was a leading creator of religious music among Eastern European contemporary composers.^{17, 18} He was born in Lviv, where he lived, worked, and composed until 1980. His compositional output includes choral, orchestral, and chamber music, as well as works for organ and various ensembles. He composed nearly forty spiritual cantatas.

Andriy Nikodemovych spent half of his creative life in a country that led a ruthless and irreconcilable struggle against religion. He counted Lviv architect and professor of the Polytechnic Institute Marian Nikodemovych (1890–1952) as a relative. Prior to the Second World War, Nikodemovych studied piano and organ and was organist at the Carmelite sisters’ chapel from 1939 to 1940. From 1943 to 1947 he simultaneously studied chemistry at Lviv University and music subjects under the guidance of leading Lviv musicians—composition with Adam Sołtys and piano with Tadeusz Majerski. From 1947 to 1950, Nikodemovich was organist at the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, and from 1951 to 1973 he taught composition, music theory, and piano at the Lviv Conservatory.

The first recognition of his compositional talent came in 1961, when he was awarded the third prize at the All-Union Composers’ Competition in Moscow. In the 1970s Nikodemovych was noted as one the most prominent composers according to UNESCO. However, having refused to renounce his religious beliefs, he was dismissed from his work at the conservatory in 1973 by Communist authorities and deprived of any livelihood, and the composer’s entire output was banned.

During the next seven years he earned his living giving private lessons. He moved to Lublin, Poland,¹⁶ and taught at University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska and at Lublin Catholic University (KUL). His creative achievements were acknowledged by the Award of Saint Brother Albert (1981), President of the City of Lublin (1999), the Polish Composers’ Union, and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (both in 2000). In 2008, Andrzej Nikodemowicz [Polish spelling] became an honorary citizen of Lublin.

Eventually, the independent Ukrainian State fully rehabilitated the name and work of this Lviv citizen. In 2003, the Lviv Music Academy gave Nikodemovych the title Professor honoris causa. His works are once more heard in the concert halls of Lviv and other cities of Ukraine. He returned to Lviv several times to participate in concerts. In April 2016, the fourth festival of classical music “Andrzej Nikodemowicz – czas i dźwięk” (“Andriy Nikodemovych – Time and Sound”) was held in Lublin.¹⁸ His religious works were performed for five evenings. The festival opened with his cantata for alto solo and small orchestra Słysz, Boże, wołanie moje (Hear, my God, my appeal). Sacred music remained an integral feature of his creativity until the end of his life.

Organ music by Bohdan Kotyuk

Bohdan Kotyuk (b. 1951) is a versatile and creative sacred music composer.^{19, 20} Kotyuk started writing music as a schoolboy, and his first mentor was a friend of his parents, Andriy Nikodemovych. At the Lviv Conservatory, he studied with Stanislav Lyudkevych (form, analysis, and folk art), Roman Simovich (instrumental study and instrumentation), Anatoly Kos-Anatolsky (polyphony and dramatic opera), Stephania Pavlyshyn (music history and musical-theoretical systems), and Desideriy Zador (composition).

For Kotyuk, spiritual music and sacred themes occupy a significant and prominent place, conditioned by family traditions and family members. Among the influential people in his life are Archbishop Samuel Cyryl Stefanowicz (1755–1858); doctor of philosophy, historian, ethnographer, and one of the founders of the Prosvita Society in Lviv, Julian Tselevych (1843–1892); Father Ivan Huhlevych; religious scholar, historian, doctor of philosophy, professor Hryhoriy Yarema; and the grandmother and teacher of Kotyuk, opera singer Olha Huhlevychivna-Yarema.

From Kotyuk’s first attempts at composing, spirituality and religious rites formed an inseparable integrity. He has written a variety of vocal and instrumental compositions, among which is the church cantata Chiesa, as well as spiritual songs and psalm settings. In the last decade he has turned to organ compositions for use in the church.

However, his spiritual works are not interpreted by the composer in a ritual-religious sense, but rather as a musical embodiment of the ideology of a biblical text. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has noted, “Spiritual music of Ukrainian composer Bohdan Kotyuk is a new word in the contemporary interpretation of the role of music in the church.”²⁰

In many cases, Kotyuk supplies brief essays to explain his concepts to his audience. This approach is followed in his collection of music pieces for wind and string instruments, Aulos and Kithara, as well as in his concert pieces, Monaco, Drive, Pit-Stop, and DJ. The composer has added his comments to his symphonic poems for organ, Sanctus, Bethlehem (with narrator or children’s choir), and Lauda nostra, as well as to organ works, Benedictus, Jericho – Fanfare, Adagietto “Tet-a-Tet,” Alleluia Prayers, and the epitaph, Way to Heaven.

The organ works by Bohdan Kotyuk can be divided into five groups:

1. The first group consists of purely sacred music, corresponding to the requirements of religious rituals. These works, though performed in concert, can be quite legitimately incorporated into liturgy. These include Sanctus, Benedictus, Alleluia (or “Praise to the Lord”), Laudatis (or “You are Lord of Honor”), and Ave Maria for pan flute and organ;

2. The second group is programmatic religious music: Jericho – Fanfare and the symphonic poem for solo organ Bethlehem; as well as works for soloists and ensemble accompanied by organ, Queen of the Angels, Christmas Carols for Joseph, Rejoice, Jordan, and Behold the Heart. To the same group can also be conditionally attributed the work for pan flute and organ, Mysteries of Dionysus;

3. The third group consists of works that, though deprived of a specific program, call forth certain associative allusions. First of all there is a collection for organ pedals Step by Step, which consists of four pieces: “The Step of the Faraoh,” “Canzona di Venezia,” “Sema –
The Dance of the Sufi-Dervish,” and “The Slalom – Zugspitze.” To this third group might also belong Adagietto “Tet-a-tet” for organ and celesta (ad libitum), as well as the trio for the pan flute, harp, and organ, Eolian Harp;

4. His concerto for organ Dona nobis pacem is in a classification of its own. The work is in three parts, which is rooted in the composer’s thoughts and feelings on the aggression and war in the East of Ukraine. These are contemporary philosophical reflections about the eternal theme of war and peace;

5. His transcriptions for organ include fragments from Richard Wagner’s operas published as a separate collection; W. A. Mozart’s operatic arias for soprano and organ; and Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns for organ solo.

Kotyuk’s traditional Missa solemnis consists of six parts. Mentioned above, Sanctus and Benedictus, respectively, constitute the fourth and fifth parts of the Mass. Kotyuk interprets these texts as an impulse to the formation of independent organ compositions. Therefore, in concert performance Sanctus and Benedictus are stand-alone compositions.

Benedictus is lyric and at the same time an elevation of the “Song of Gratitude” the Prophet Zechariah sang at the birth of his son, Saint John the Baptist. Kotyuk’s Benedictus is a psalm of gratitude composed for the organ.

Bohdan Kotyuk’s Sanctus for organ is not just the words taken from Isaiah 6:3: “Holy Lord God of Sabaoth, the whole earth is full of your glory!” This is the viewpoint of a person in the twenty-first century for whom “the holiness and glory of the Lord” penetrate both the spaces of the universe and the elementary particles of the nucleus of the atom. They are also in the secret depths of human consciousness and subconsciousness. According to its emotional charge and deep essence, Kotyuk’s Sanctus is very similar to the poem “Deus Magnificus” from the collection by Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, Great Harmony (1932).

Laudatis (or “The Praised One”) for solo organ is a hymn in which the composer first of all addresses the Creator. Lauda Nostra (or “Our Song of Praise”) is a symphonic poem for solo organ, a majestic composition in which the author skillfully combines the principles of symphonic development with purely organ-related techniques.

In his creativity the composer provides historical and religious content through music. Kotyuk’s attention is attracted to those historic places that have an important bearing on the history of Christianity. Among the different themes are distinguished two: the first one is connected with the Old Testament and the city of Jericho, which became the final destination of the Israeli people led by Moses to the Promised Land. And the second one is the city of Bethlehem, in which the Savior, Jesus Christ, came into the world.

Jericho is the oldest city in the world and has been continuously populated for eleven thousand years. In the Bible, this city is referred to as a symbol of majestic achievements. In these events, fanfares on the ritual Jewish shofar played a special role. By means of the loud fanfares of Joshua, the commander crumbled the impenetrable walls of the city of Jericho, the first fortification on the West Bank of the Jordan River in the Promised Land, to which Moses brought his people (Joshua 6:1–27).

The fall of the walls of Jericho has symbolic significance. The composer seeks to draw a parallel between Biblical history and the symbolism of the influence of music (in particular, organ fanfares) on the destruction of stereotypes and misunderstandings between people with the help of sacred music.

In the New Testament, Jericho is the symbol of “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (Matthew 4:8). The Holy Spirit led Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan River through the desert to Mount Qarantal, overlooking Jericho. In one of the caves of this rock in solitude, praying and reflectioning on his mission on earth, Jesus spent forty days fasting and standing against the temptations of the devil. Mount Karantal (Mons Quarantana in Latin, Quaranta meaning forty) is also called the Mount of Temptation (Luke 4:12). Kotyuk’s Jericho –
Fanfare is a sonic attempt to convey the greatness of spirit and man’s faith in the triumph of the Lord’s intentions through the organ.

Kotyuk composed a symphonic poem for organ entitled Bethlehem (with narratator or children’s choir). Bethlehem was the royal seat of King David. It was from this royal family that came Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and guardian of Jesus in his youth. After the accession of Judea to Syria, the emperor Octavian Augustus (63 BC–14 AD) ordered the governor of Rome in Judea Quirinium to carry out a census. This took place in the Holy Land just at the time when Jesus was born. The path of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem became a journey that was conditioned by the regulations of the census. God’s great love of mankind manifested itself in the birth of his Son, Jesus, and the long-awaited message about the Savior: “Today, in the city of David, the Savior, who is Christ the Lord, was born to you” (Luke 2:11).

The impressive symbolism lies in the name of the city of Bethlehem: ית‭ ‬לחם [Beth-lehem] is a “bread house” in Hebrew; بيت لحم [Beit-Lahm] is a “house of meat” in Arabic. The difficult path through the Jewish desert to Bethlehem, the lack of accommodation for the pregnant Mary, and the birth of the Savior in the manger, the rise of the leading star in the sky, showing the way for the shepherds to the newborn Son and the Three Magi—this dramatic biblical history was drawn by Kotyuk into the program of Bethlehem.

The work has distinct dramatic sections. The texture of the first fast section with the highlighted tonal foundation that should be associated with the Arabic east is an image of a desert, but the composer also puts into this image a deep philosophical content. This is not only the desert symbolizing the compulsory wanderings of the Holy Family, but also a desert that overwhelms human souls in their inability and reluctance to give an adequate assessment of their own sinfulness. It was to reveal the essence of people’s sin that the Lord sent his Son among people for the sake of enlightenment and for the redemption of their sins. And these sins Christ took upon himself through his crucifixion.

The second image, contrasting with the melismatic briskness of the desert image, is the pompous grandeur of the cities and temples built by the hands of the people. The symbolism of this image in the symphonic poem is in excessive haughtiness and inaccessibility for the common man of Jerusalem’s strongholds, which the Holy Family was passing by, and the closed doors of Bethlehem’s buildings, which failed to open before the mother of the future Savior.

The vivid contrast in Bethlehem is the episode of the birth of the Savior. The optimistic nature of this episode is the bright hope of mankind for the possibility of salvation. However, anxiety and doubt overwhelm this composition; the desert continues to be the devouring trap from which it is so difficult for mankind to break through for millennia. The deep sacral content of Bethlehem is a kind of philosophical credo of Kotyuk, a composer for whom the Spirit, spirituality, and high moral values form a single whole.

All of the above-mentioned works have been written by Bohdan Kotyuk during the last ten years in his creative collaboration with organist Olena Matselyukh. They constitute part of her repertoire and are performed at organ concerts at the Lviv Hall of Organ and Chamber Music, in the Lviv Regional Philharmonic, and when she tours Ukraine and abroad. They are also performed at the concerts of touring organists from different countries of the world.

§

The names and achievements of composers and organists of the Lviv Organ School should rightly occupy a worthy place not only in Ukrainian musicology, but also in the history of world music and culture. This is especially true of the depth of sacredness and its interpretation in the conditions of modern innovative technologies and textual multi-interpretations.

Modern Ukrainian organ art has only recently begun to regain its rightful status. Ukrainian musicology still lacks specialists in religious ritualism, which provides an insight into the world of the sacred. It is this factor of sacredness that greatly inspires composers’ music for the organ. Such professional knowledge would allow many contemporary Ukrainian composers to better understand the boundaries of the sacred and profane in organ music. Using these important categories in the analysis of organ music must become an integral part of the apparatus of the musicologist-researcher.

Notes

1. Kiev History website: https://web.archive.org/web/20071109205908/http://oldkyiv.org.ua/data/s….

2. Mazepa, Leszek. “Muzycy i muzykalia w miejskich księgach kasowych Lwowskiego Magistratu w XV–XVII wiekach, Musica Antiqua IX, Vol. 1. Acta Musicologica, Bydgoszcz, 1991.

3. Gołos, Jerzy. “Polskie organy i muzyka organowa, Instytut wydawniczy “PAX,” Warszawa, 1972, p. 512.

4. Babnis, Maciej. Kultura organowa Galicji, Słupsk: Akademia Pomorska, 2012, p. 674.

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Photo: Cathedral of Saint Mary Magdalene, Lviv, Rieger Kloss Opus 3375

Lorraine S. Brugh

Lorraine Brugh is professor of music and Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana. She recently served as director of the university’s study abroad program in Cambridge, England.

Saturday is market day in Alkmaar. On the way to the Sint-Laurenskerk from my hotel there were stalls filled with fresh fish, cheese, fruits and vegetables, breads and desserts. Tempting as they were, I hurried through to make the 9:00 a.m. starting time for the first round of the International Schnitger Organ Competition 2019. With the church bells chiming 9:00, the jury entered, and the members were introduced.

The jury

The five jury members for 2019 included: Martin Böcker, lecturer at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and artistic director of the Orgelakademie Stade, Germany; Bernard Foccroulle, professor of organ for the Conservatoire of Brussels, Belgium; Krzysztof Urbaniak, head of the organ and sacred music department, Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland; Bas de Vroome, organ professor at the Rotterdam Conservatorium voor Muziek, the Netherlands; and Wolfgang Zerer, professor of organ at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Hamburg, Germany. The competition began in 1991 and is held biennially in Alkmaar, centered at the Great Sint-Laurenskerk in the city center.

The organs

Great Sint-Laurenskerk houses two important organs. The instrument that has already won the grand prize, of course, is the large Germer Van Hagerbeer/Schnitger organ (1646/1725) at the west end, both a sight to behold and a delight to hear. Adding to its appeal is the controversy surrounding its history, which has only served to heighten its prominence. Arp Schnitger died before working on the instrument and his son, Frans Caspar Schnitger, finished the instrument.

The second and smaller instrument is in a swallow’s nest gallery on a side wall of the nave just east of the apse and was built by Jan Van Covelens in 1511. Meantone temperament tweaked this Western equal-temperament ear with unusual tonalities and pitches. Hearing the older music of Sweelinck, Frescobaldi, Hassler, and others offered a glimpse into the way this music originally sounded. The Van Covelens organ is the oldest playable instrument in the Netherlands.

The competition

Forty-five applicants from thirteen countries submitted an audio performance to be considered for the 2019 biennial competition. From those ten were chosen to compete in Alkmaar. To prepare for the competition and its organs, the ten finalists were all given a spring weekend in Alkmaar practicing on the instruments. This gave the competitors time to adjust to the mechanical demands of each instrument and their differences as well as conceive registrations before the competition week.

During the first round each contestant performed on both instruments. As we moved from the apse to the west end the performer also moved from the Van Covelens organ to the Schnitger. Pieter Van Dijk, city organist in Alkmaar, explained the differences of the two instruments from the performers’ point of view: the Van Covelens has a smaller manual compass, limited pedal range, and smaller keys and pedals than the Schnitger. The oldest stop, from 1511, is the Hoofdwerk 6′ Holpijp, which starts at low F. The Trompet in the Pedaal (this division’s only stop) balances perfectly with the 8′ Doof (Praestant) in the manual, though it sounds very loud from the console. The Borstwerk and the Hoofdwerk were both used with a 4′ stop as the foundation in one performer’s final Sweelinck variation. There are almost no repeats in the Mixtuur. The Scherp is intentionally weighted to give the top intensity, just as choirs are often weighted with more sound in the treble than in the bass registers.

The Schnitger organ fills the entire west end of the nave, a beautiful and massive case. In 1725 Schnitger added a 2′ flute in the Groot-Manuaal and the 2′ Nachthorn in the Pedaal, adding a brighter and singing quality to the instrument. Schnitger added these at his own expense as he felt the organ was incomplete without them.

A large part of the competition’s challenge lies in transitioning from one instrument to the other in the space of a few minutes. The pieces in this round were all compulsory: Sweelinck, Erbarm dich mein, O Herre Gott, SwWV 30, on the Van Covelens organ, and Bach, Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 664, and Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 547, on the Schnitger.

There was no memorization requirement for the competition, and competitors were known to the jury and audience only by their contestant number. So, while the playing level was generally strong, musically and technically, there was no way to know who was playing during their performance. Listening became an exercise in hearing subtle differences between interpretations of a piece, considering various tempi, and listening to how performers used the room and its acoustics.

Following the ten performances, the six finalists to advance to the second round were Victor Manuel Baena de la Torre (Spain), Oliver Brett (United Kingdom), Freddie James (United Kingdom), António Pedrosa (Portugal), Daniel Seeger (Germany), and Vittorio Vanini (Italy).

The next round offered some choice in literature, this time played on the Kapelkerk organ in Alkmaar. The organ is a Christian Müller instrument from 1762, maintained by Flentrop since 1939 and restored by the firm between 1982 and 1986. The repertoire included a Buxtehude canzona of the player’s choice, three chorale preludes for manuals alone from J. S. Bach’s Clavierübung III (Wir glauben all in einen Gott, BWV 681, Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 677, and Die sind die heilgen zehn Gebot, BWV 679), and a Bach toccata for manuals alone (BWV 910–916). A hot summer evening did not make playing these delicate pieces any easier. The jury selected Victor Baena de la Torre, Freddie James, and Vittoria Vanini as the three finalists for 2019.

The finalists

Victor Baena de la Torre (Spain, b. 1995): At the age of twelve de la Torre started playing guitar and piano and later studied these instruments at the Conservatory of Madrid. There he became interested in the interpretation of early music, especially for organ and harpsichord, and decided to study organ with Anselmo Serna and harpsichord and basso continuo with Denise De La-Herrán. As a basso continuo player, he has participated in various opera productions. He has participated in masterclasses for organ and harpsichord with, among others, Lorenzo Ghielmi and Bernard Foccroulle. He currently studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Pieter van Dijk and Matthias Havinga.

Freddie James (United Kingdom, b. 1990): James started as a chorister at Southwark Cathedral, and after leaving the choir, he held positions as organ scholar at Croydon Minster and assistant organist at Sint-Nicolaas Basilica, Amsterdam. He was then organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge. With the choir, he performed in a range of venues around the world, including in Japan (Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Tokyo Opera City), the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark, and on a number of radio broadcasts, including a recording for Chandos of works by Thomas Tomkins. He was subsequently organist of the Christuskirche, Stuttgart, and is currently organist of the Church of St. Peter and Paul, Oberwil, in Basel, Switzerland.

Vittorio Vanini (Italy, b. 1996): Vanini entered the Conservatorio of Como, Italy, in 2011, where he studied first with Luca Bassetto, then with Enrico Viccardi. In 2017 he completed a bachelor’s degree in organ with honor. During his studies he focused on organ literature, harpsichord, and thorough-bass with Davide Pozzi and on composition with Antonio Eros Negri and Caterina Calderoni. He is currently studying at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland, in the class of Tobias Lindner. He has been working as a church organist in the parishes of Lurago Marinone and Cucciago, Italy, and he has given concerts in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland.

The final round

The final round returned to Sint-Laurenkerk with literature for both organs. For the Van Covelens organ, each contestant chose a song variation set by Sweelinck. On the Schnitger organ each finalist chose a large Bach chorale prelude from Clavierübung III or from 18 Choräle verschiedener Art and a prelude and fugue [BWV 532, 541, 546, or 550], and a work by Piet Kee from Gedenck-Clanck ’76.

The winners and prizes

The prizes reflect both the civic and religious relationships of this festival to the city of Alkmaar. Following the final round the jury announced the prizes:

Schnitger prize (first prize, €5,000)—Victor Baena de la Torre

The first prize of the competition is named after organbuilder Frans Caspar Schnitger (1693–1729), son of the legendary Arp Schnitger. In 1723–1725, at the instigation of the newly appointed city organist Gerhardus Havingha (1696–1753), Frans Caspar carried out the highly controversial renovation of the Van Hagerbeer organ in Alkmaar. Behind the unchanged organ cases, designed by architect Jacob van Campen, a completely new type of instrument in North German style arose for Holland. Schnitger thus achieved the definitive breakthrough of this aesthetic in Dutch organbuilding. The Alkmaar organ is the best-preserved instrument by him.

Flentrop prize (second prize, €2,500)—Vittorio Vanini

Flentrop Orgelbouw of Zaandam, the Netherlands, has executed many important organ restoration and new-build projects in the Netherlands and abroad, including the restoration of both organs in Grote Sint-Laurenskerk, Alkmaar. Flentrop Orgelbouw adopted the second prize of the International Schnitger Organ Competition during the tenure of Cees van Oostenbrugge, who was then the company’s director.

Third prize (€1,000)—Freddie James

Izaäk Kingma prize (audience prize)—Vittorio Vanini

Izaäk Kingma (1936–2004) was secretary of both Alkmaar organ foundations for many years: the International Schnitger Organ Competition Foundation and the Friends of the Organ Foundation. In addition to his career in education, he was active as an organist in various churches in Alkmaar, including the Trefpuntkerk and the Remonstrantse Kerk. Because of its great merits for the Alkmaar organ culture, the International Schnitger Organ Competition Foundation decided in 2004 to link its name to the public prize of the International Schnitger Organ Competition that takes place during the biennial Organ Festival Holland in Alkmaar.

The symposium

Running concurrently with the competition was an organ symposium, a series of workshops and masterclasses presented by the jury members. This year’s topic was “The better Schnitger?” The young organbuilder Frans Caspar Schnitger, son of the legendary Arp Schnitger, with his organ in Alkmaar, was the subject of the symposium. Workshops and masterclasses were offered for “accomplished amateur and professional organists.” Participants who wished to play for the masterclasses also prepared required pieces for the event.

The presentations included:

Martin Böcker: “Schnitger in Stade and Hamburg and what happens before and afterwards.” This presentation looked at the ways Arp Schnitger developed his premise for sound ideal and construction close to home before building instruments further afield;

Cees van der Poel: “The Zwolle Organ—Schnitger’s Ticket to Holland.” This commission began Arp Schnitger’s international career, opening the way to further projects in the Netherlands;

Krzysztof Urbaniak: “Activity of Schnitger’s pupils east of the Oder-Neisse line.” Dr. Urbaniak demonstrated the direct influence of the Schnitger style on Polish instruments through the students and apprentices of Arp Schnitger;

Gerben Gritter, professor of music theory and organbuilding at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. His doctoral thesis focused on the life and work of the organbuilder Christian Müller, the builder of the Sint-Bavokerk organ in Haarlem. He highlighted differences and similarities between Schnitger and Müller;

Frank van Wijk, organist at the Kapelkerk in Alkmaar: “The innovative properties that the Alkmaar organ still has to offer us today.” VanWijk described many of the events that keep the church and its organs in the center of the city’s life. Hosting children’s choir festivals, organ recitals, and other innovative programming keeps the community connected to this landmark church. The foundation that supports the festival brings guest performers and new music for these old organs in order to reach a new audience. Specific composition commissions and combinations of organ with choir, orchestra, or electronics are used to broaden the organ culture.

Concert and recital highlights

The festival included an organ and choral concert featuring the St. Salvator Chapel Choir, St. Andrew’s University, Edinburgh, Scotland, Claire Innes-Hopkins, director, and Bernard Foccroulle, organist. The Scottish choir delighted the audience with its sleek sound in a beautiful acoustic. The Schnitger organ created an interesting dialogue with its massive and varied sounds.

A noonday concert presented Cees van der Poel and Gerben Gritter playing works of Lübeck, Böhm, Jacob Wilhelm Lustig, and Johann Nikolaus Hanff on the Schnitger organ. A “Four hands and feet organ concert” put the spotlight on Pieter Van Dijk, city organist in Alkmaar, and Frank Van Wijk, playing solo and duet literature.

This is an ambitious festival, carried out by an army of volunteers. The festival committee created a hospitable welcome while running a well-planned, high-level event. Gratitude is due to all those who work hard to keep this instrument and its importance alive, giving pride of place to young organists ready to build their performance careers.